


All The Seeds Lie Below

by lady_ragnell



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pride and Prejudice Fusion, Demonic Possession, Demons, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:14:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 84,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24366379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Fairpoint Hold has been empty for years, but when new owners move in, they turn the neighborhood, and the lives of Valira Linnaeus's family, upside down.Or, Blight & Prejudice.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Player Character/Non-Player Character(s)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 28
Collections: The Campaign of Five Dragons





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The only real **warning** for this one is the one in the tags for demonic possession (including character death from same). There are mild elements of family disownment, but it's all in the backstory.
> 
> This has been a very long labor of love, and I hope you enjoy it! If you are intimidated by the size of the cast, there is a list of characters from this campaign [here on tumblr](https://theladyragnell.tumblr.com/post/619056221293543425/five-dragons-character-list) that should hopefully provide a little context for why things are cast the way they are! Before you go looking for him, though, Mr. Loz is not on the list! The campaign did not have an appropriate Wickham, so I stitched him together out of a few canonical demons and a hapless NPC made up from whole cloth.
> 
> The title is from "All The Stars" by The Wailin' Jennys.

“Fairpoint Hold is occupied at last,” says Arfil almost as soon as he's through the door, while he's still kissing the younger girls on the cheek, and Valira looks up from a botanical illustration that's giving her trouble in time to catch Constance and Quil each with a hand on her chest, mother and daughter both reacting with shock that Arfil must find satisfying.

“No one's lived there as long as I've been in Tyneshire,” says Valira, putting her sketch paper aside and standing to greet him in her turn.

“After the scandal, all the children went to Hylene, that I know of,” says Constance, while Valira lets Arfil kiss her hand, always so fond and courtly with them, always as though he doesn't realize they're poor relations, a strange crew of women he's collected under his protection. “Have they sold it?”

“They can't have, we would have heard,” says Cordelia, but there's a smile breaking on her face. There's been little to entertain in the neighborhood since she and Trilli have been allowed to attend parties.

“You're right,” says Arfil. “I heard from the professor, though, that it's a daughter of the house, if you'll believe it, and her husband too, both of them officers and with an income, no less. The Windroses.”

“The Windroses of Fairpoint Hold,” says Constance. “Sounds very fine indeed. Much better than that Crestmaker.”

“Have you already paid a call?” Trilli asks, all but hanging from his arm as though she's still a child and not a young woman precocious enough to insist upon being out at sixteen. “Are they intending to attend the public assembly in a few days?”

Arfil laughs, wading through the tide of the family to get past them and put down the daily books Idilus must have lent him, or returned to him. He really ought to be a professor at the school of magic himself, but instead he merely spends most days there, and invites Idilus to dinner most nights. “I did not visit, but I thought I might pay a call on Lieutenant Colonel and Major Windrose tomorrow, to welcome them to the neighborhood. I suppose I might ask about the assembly.” He raises his eyebrows at Quil and Valira. “I'm told they bring guests with them.”

“They will all be too busy with their own society for ours,” says Quil, but she looks a little hopeful, a little intrigued, and she looks at Valira like she's hoping for support or confirmation.

For all Arfil talks about the marriages he hopes they'll all make, Valira has never thought of herself as anything resembling eligible. She has no money of her own, no connections outside her own household, a disowned daughter of a disreputable line, and any dowry she has is going to be at Arfil's mercy, and no matter the significant funds settled on him for the nebulous heroism of his youth, dowries for four young women could easily stretch his generosity thin. “They could hardly avoid the assembly,” she says, to Quil's hopeful smile and Trilli and Cordelia's joyful agreements. “So I suppose we shall at least meet them, and if you do not charm at least one of them, Quil, I don't know you at all.”

Quil ducks her head, an instant denial on her tongue, and Constance smiles at her and Cordelia protests that no one in the neighborhood is prettier or sweeter than Quil and that the newest residents of Fairpoint Hold would be fools not to see it, and Trilli soon joins in, and Valira smiles at her family and shakes her head and goes to let the servants know that Arfil is home and there's no more need to hold dinner.

They will all, at least, get a few weeks of excitement out of the Windroses and whatever guests they bring, and that is all Valira expects from any of them.

*

That night, she catches Quil peering out the window of their bedroom, though there's no way to get a view of Fairpoint Hold from it.

“They're going to set the neighborhood by its ear,” Valira observes, and Quil jumps a little as she turns around. There's no crackle of magic, though, as there might have been even a year or two ago if she were startled. Arfil and Idilus don't have quite the same sort of magic as Quil does, much less Valira, but they're a help for certain, to both of them. “Daydreaming like the girls?”

“I always forget that you haven't lived in the neighborhood forever,” says Quil, moving away from the window to the vanity, sitting to let Valira help her with her hairpins, habit born of years of routine, since Cordelia and Trilli both announced that it was silly to share rooms with their older relatives rather than each other nearly as soon as they'd acclimated to the household. “Fairpoint Hold was always bustling. It wasn't friendly, but it was busy. You'd see the servants at the shops, or Crestmaker sometimes doing his business, and occasionally some of the children at church or out for a walk, though they'd never talk.”

“And then?” Valira prompts, though she's heard the edges of the story, enough to guess at some of it.

“A year or two before Cordelia and I—well, a year or two before all of that, so three or four before you came, they were quite suddenly all gone, and General Crestmaker himself was dead. Rumor had it the eldest few boys found occupation in Hylene and took care of the younger, and there were some scandals about the circumstances around the death, and rumors about how he treated the children, but it's been all shut up ever since.”

Valira can't help looking out the window at that, much as Quil was just doing, though standing by the vanity dealing with Quil's hair gives her an even worse vantage point than Quil had. It sounds like a ghost story, not like the precursor to anything romantic, but it means that the village will be talking about it for weeks, if not months. “Well, I hope they make it a happy home, then.” She meets Quil's eyes in the mirror to smile. “And that someone they've brought with them catches your eye.”

“You aren't looking forward to that yourself?” Quil inquires, standing to let Valira take her place, though Valira's hairpins have never survived a day fully intact. “You can't just roam the fields around home forever.”

“Perhaps not. But I'm a little old for it—”

“Oh, you are not.”

“And even if I weren't, who would have me? No, I shall be a spinster aunt, which is why you have to marry well at the earliest opportunity, so I'm not forced to rely on Trilli or Cordelia for my hopes.”

Quil stops dealing with Valira's hair long enough to put a hand on her shoulder and squeeze. “Who would have you? Any number of people, if you would look around. Why shouldn't you have one of the Lieutenant Colonel's friends or brothers, if you like them?”

Valira is strange and solitary and awkward, even aside from everything else she is, but Quil, faithful and kind Quil, seems to believe in her charms more than she ever will herself, and there's a pinched line between her brows when Valira looks at her in the mirror, a sure sign of distress. There's no worth in digging her heels in, so she smiles at Quil until some of the anxiety eases out of her expression. “You're right, of course,” she says, and the lie trips off her tongue with enough conviction that Quil seems to believe it. “Though it would have to be quite a special person to tempt me away from my family.”

“You and I shall just have to marry brothers,” Quil says, reaching for the hairbrush, “and we won't have to be tempted at all.”

Valira laughs and parries that all the brothers will be fighting over Quil herself, and Quil smacks her on the shoulder with the hairbrush but laughs in her turn and changes the subject to the upcoming assembly, and who will have time to have new clothes made to honor the new residents of the neighborhood.

*

Public assemblies are always packed in Windell, but the one that follows the Windroses' arrival in town is such a crush Valira can barely scrape her way through the crowd. Arfil spots Idilus right away, near the door frowning at his latest students, all in a boisterous mass and hopefully not in a state to accidentally set anything on fire during the party, and leaves them with apologies, and the rest of the family takes that as an excuse to scatter.

Trilli, when she's not dancing (and as the youngest in the family, and one of the youngest in local society, she often finds herself out of a dance much against her will), likes to spend time near the musicians, and disappears to do just that, Cordelia on her heels, though she's quite likely to get distracted by Idilus's students, with whom she's always a great favorite. With the two of them off, young enough to be heedless without causing too much of a scandal, Valira is left with Constance and Quil, both of whom look nervous, as they do every time they go out in public, no matter that it's been a long time since they were anything but respectable.

Quil looks even lovelier than usual, though if she keeps wringing her hands she'll wrinkle her gloves within minutes. Valira takes her hand for a moment and squeezes. “You'll be wonderful. And even if they don't come, Miss Keene will no doubt be happy to dance with you, as ever.” She looks at Constance, who is, after all, supposed to be their chaperone, even if Valira is nearly on the shelf enough to do the job herself. “And I believe I've seen the Zanarams across the room, so I'm going to look for Frog, and see what gossip he knows, since Mrs. Zanaram will surely have visited Fairpoint Hold by now.”

The Zanaram family, when she reaches them, are in a riot of excitement, which is their usual state as far as Valira can tell. Frog is the second child of six, and only his older sister is married, leaving the rest of them always looking after their prospects, and from the bustle of them, Valira suspects everyone's wonderings about the family at Fairpoint Hold will soon be put to rest.

“Miss Linnaeus,” says Frog with every appearance of relief when she wins her way through the wall of his younger siblings, all of whom have a great many things to say about absolutely everything. “The first dance, perhaps?”

“As always,” she assures him, and takes his hand when he offers it to join the set, where they'll all be rubbing shoulders and tangling skirts despite two sets forming right away. “The whole neighborhood is excited. You must have seen them already.”

Frog sighs. “You too?”

Valira shakes her head. “Not on my own behalf.” She tilts her head at Quil, who is indeed taking her place in the set with Miss Keene, who's as good a friend to her as Frog is to Valira and who might have married her if Quil had ever shown a shade of an interest. “She looks well tonight, I think.”

“Setting your cap on your sister's behalf? I'm not surprised,” he says, but there's little rancor in it, and after a moment, when the music starts, he rolls his eyes and starts speaking. “Lieutenant Colonel Windrose is one of Crestmaker's, so it's her home they're coming back to. She and the husband both seem personable enough, and happy to join in local society.”

“And the guests?”

“Two brothers of the Lieutenant Colonel, one already married, and a friend from the army. An eligible crew, with a few fortunes between them, between Crestmaker and Major Ewhoza's ancestral estate at Belvale Park.”

They're in the thick of the dance, so Valira can't very well ask if they're all personable or if only the Windroses are. Quil deserves someone kind, someone patient and gentle, and Valira cares more about that than about eligibility in the end. Frog, she knows, doesn't agree. He's been bald for years now about wanting a marriage that will support him, allow him a household away from his large and nosy family, and if anyone from Fairpoint Hold looks his way, kind or not, he'll consider them. She can't blame him for it, but she doesn't want it for Quil either. “Do I know Belvale Park?” she asks instead of saying any of it, and Frog treats her to a discussion of the park's situation near the eastern border, in timber country.

When the dance ends, Valira dances with Miss Keene, swapping partners with Quil in an easy and practiced routine that they've used at every assembly since they've been out. Halfway through the dance, there's a sensation near the door, and Valira yearns to crane her neck and see if it's the party from Fairpoint Hold, but Lauren deserves better from her, so it's another ten minutes before she can collect Quil and Frog and look around for the strangers in the room.

They're easy to spot, in newer fashions than everyone else, a little circle cleared around them though Mrs. Zanaram is bravely breaching it to welcome them to the neighborhood.

The pair at the front, receiving the most effusive welcome, must be the Windroses. The Lieutenant Colonel is tall and serious, but her smile looks sincere, and there's no fashionable coldness in her posture towards her husband—her arm may be decorously through his, but their shoulders are touching too. The Major is looking around the room, genial and nodding seriously to whatever Mrs. Zanaram is saying in the meantime, and every few seconds he looks at his wife as though there's a wonderful joke they're both in on. Valira, who's never been one to trust on first acquaintance, is surprised by the strength of her approval of them.

The four men arrayed behind them are harder to sort. Two will be brothers, one a husband of one of the brothers, and the last will be Major Ewhoza, whose relation to the family she doesn't yet understand. From the linked arms of two of the men, a human and a blue dragonborn, she thinks they must be the married ones, and there are smiles there too, if a little warier than those on the Windroses. Valira can't blame them for wariness, though. She doesn't know what marks Crestmaker has left on them, and they don't know what marks he left on local society. The other two men are as good as interchangeable, though they look nothing alike, one large and grinning, the other who Valira might call handsome if he didn't also look so sour. She'd be inclined to think the sour one is another of Crestmaker's children, and rightly sour with that behind him, but he seems less comfortable with the group than the other, so it's quite possible he's Major Ewhoza.

“Oh, Arfil's going over to them,” Quil says in Valira's ear as the crowd tries to collect itself, spying on the new arrivals and readying for the next dance all at once. “And—oh dear, the girls have spotted it too.”

Sure enough, Trilli and Cordelia are rushing in that direction, and Arfil has managed to part the crowd around him, and Constance is far away, caught in a group of fellow matrons, so Valira sighs and starts forward. Trilli and Cordelia are overwhelming enough to their friends. Strangers might not know quite what to do with them.

Quil lags behind for a second, but then she's right at Valira's side, and Frog not far behind them, and they reach the group just in time for Mrs. Zanaram to say “Ah, and here's my son now, Mr. Frog Zanaram if you don't recall him from the other day.”

Everyone bows politely, just enough time for the younger girls to arrive, rosy and a bit chaotic, Cordelia's hair escaping its braid, Trilli's glove stained with ink. Arfil, as though they're all quite correct, sweeps his arm to include the four of them. “Ah, I was just speaking of my wards. I shall have to wait to present Mrs. Myale to you, but in the meantime, the rest of our household.” He indicates Quil and Cordelia. “Miss Myale and Miss Cordelia Myale.” They both bob curtsies, Quil's much less precarious than Cordelia's, since Cordelia is still all but clinging to Trilli's arm. “And Miss Linnaeus and Miss Trillium Linnaeus.”

Valira curtsies herself, and tries not to wince, as she always does, at the use of her last name. She wanted a new one so badly when she left home with nothing to her name and her cousin clinging to her hand, but she needed her connections, has no hope of marrying Trilli off properly with no known name, so it means suffering through it at parties. “A pleasure,” she says, and hopes that her reaction doesn't give them any offense.

If it does, the Windroses don't seem to show it. The Lieutenant Colonel offers a friendly hand for Valira to shake, and Arfil introduces her and her husband and the rest of the party. Valira's guesses, she's pleased to know, are right—Mr. Iain Ellerwer and his husband Lieutenant Iorza-Ellerwer Kal are just as easy with each other as the Windroses are. Captain Lanra Kahalar is charming and funny and nearly makes Trilli swoon bowing over her hand.

Major Ewhoza is less friendly. He's the last introduced, and there's something tense about the set of his shoulders, and something barely removed from a sneer on his face. Quil is talking quietly with the Windroses about the local scenery, Captain Kahalar is occupying the younger girls, and apparently Mr. Ellerwer is a magic user of some stripe and has gained Arfil's attention, so Valira is left confronted with the necessity of talking to someone who clearly would rather not be in Tyneshire, let alone in the assembly room.

“How are you finding Fairpoint Hold?” she tries.

“It's well enough.”

That all but forbids further comment, but he's the one who came to the party in the first place, and she doubts his friends will let him stand to the side all night, so it's silly to treat anyone trying to be friendly as though they're beneath his notice. “Do you dance?” she asks next. It's an easy question to agree with.

“Rarely,” he says, and gives her a stiff little bow. “If you'll excuse me,” he adds, and unbelievably strikes out without further comment for one of the walls, where he will no doubt stay all evening, being decorative and no fun at all.

When Valira looks back at Quil, she's taking Lieutenant Colonel Windrose's hand, looking more than a bit flustered. Trilli and Cordelia, much to their disappointment, haven't been honored, Captain Kahalar apologizing and saying he has a dance with one of the Zanarams and the Ellerwers clearly intending to dance together. When he spots Valira awkward and alone, Major Windrose extends a friendly hand. “Miss Linnaeus, would you do me the honor?”

Mrs. Zanaram doesn't look offended, and Valira likes dancing, so she takes his hand and joins the set right next to Quil.

Major Windrose is charming in a way Valira doesn't mistrust, to her pleasure and surprise. She's met charming people before, and always had the sense that they knew their own charms and cultivated them, but Major Windrose just seems to honestly prefer smiles to politeness and chatter to decorous silence. Every time he passes his wife in the set, he smiles, and it's only a few times before he's extending the courtesy to Quil as well, whose color is high and who seems to be having a serious conversation with Lieutenant Colonel Windrose about, from what Valira can gather, her bees.

At the end of the dance, she's not surprised when Major Windrose excuses himself to ask Quil to dance, and the rest of the party from Fairpoint Hold seems quite occupied, so Valira checks in on Constance, who seems pleased at the gratifying attention Quil is getting from their most illustrious guests. Mr. Ellerwer dances with her after that, while his husband takes his own turn with Quil, and turns out to have druidic magic as Valira does, which makes for a pleasant conversation, and then Valira excuses herself to sit and catch her breath, mostly because it might give Trilli and Cordelia a chance at exciting partners from where they're clearly chafing at the side of the hall.

Frog finds her, his cheeks red with the vigor of the dancing, having just come from Captain Kahalar's enthusiastic partnering, and Valira offers a quick trip outdoors. Frog never objects to being outside at night, where he might during the day, and the two of them duck out into the evening cool, taking up their usual positions under a window where they can hear the current dance end and make it back inside to find partners.

Neither of them has much to say, knowing the conversation might carry up and inside, and Valira will admit, if only to herself, that she likes the chance to eavesdrop on people who don't realize the same from inside.

“There you are,” says a voice, clearly approaching just at the open window, and Valira looks up, because it's not a very familiar voice, but she thinks she knows it anyway: a woman's, low and clear. Lieutenant Colonel Windrose. “You didn't have to come if you were just going to stare out the window all night.”

“And inconvenience your staff by staying home when the rest of the family is out? I'm not so cruel.”

That's a less familiar voice, but Valira catches Frog's eye, and his eyebrows go up, and he mouths something that can only be “Ewhoza,” which she might have guessed, given Major Ewhoza's sulky withdrawal from the party.

“You could have stayed. Do dance, won't you? I invited you here so you could relax. If you won't allow yourself to do it, what good does that do?”

“You say that, and you and your husband monopolize the prettiest woman in the place all evening.” There's something wry in that, and Valira could almost like him for a moment, for admiring Quil, for needling his friend the way Valira sometimes needles hers, even as she doesn't approve of his easy dismissal of everyone else.

“Miss Myale is very charming, but she's far from the only one who is, if you look around. Terry said his dance with Miss Linnaeus was very enjoyable, and Iain agrees. You could try dancing with her—I'd planned to do so myself, but if she's busy, I'll happily cede to you.”

There's a pause while Valira squirms with discomfort and doesn't look at Frog even as she feels his gaze drilling into her. “No,” says Ewhoza at last. “I don't wish to dance, much less with her. I've no desire to steal Miss Myale from you, there's no need to fob me off on the lesser sister.”

There's another long pause from above, and Valira thinks about walking away. Frog wouldn't stop her. He wouldn't stop her if she walked away towards home, and she has enough self-control not to try that. He definitely won't stop her walking into the party. The only thing that keeps her planted is that she doesn't know what she would say upon her return. “Unkind, Haoti,” the Lieutenant Colonel says at last. “I won't force you to dance, but these are good people trying to welcome us. I'll leave you be, if that's what you want, but I won't hear that.”

There's no response, apology or bluster, and Lieutenant Colonel Windrose doesn't speak again, must move away from the window.

“Well,” says Frog, very quietly. Quietly enough that it won't carry up to the window. Valira shakes her head, not sure if her hurt or her fury is foremost in her mind. “Fine, then. Shall we show them how it's done?”

Valira takes a deep breath. The dance isn't over yet, but it might be by the time she fights her way through the crowd. “Yes. Yes, I think we should.”

*

It's easy enough to dismiss Major Ewhoza's comments as unkindness and snobbery, and easy enough to dismiss him as too proud for local society. Valira knows she's not as pretty as Quil, or as Cordelia and Trilli might well grow up to be, but she's good company and a lively dancer and she doesn't have expectations of marriage anyway, particularly not of rich strangers. If he has a poor opinion of her, it's his own business.

But his friends are flirting assiduously with Quil, the Windroses both inclined to fetch her drinks and speak to her between dances even when they can't dance more with her without causing scandal at even so informal a gathering as this one. She's going to have to be friendly, and that makes her all too aware of his presence in the hall as she comes back, has her dance with Frog, and then dances with the Lieutenant Colonel, who's kind and interested in her family and her studies with Idilus and asks three subtle questions about Quil while making no sign of having ever heard anyone speak an ill word about Valira.

When the dance is over, though, and she's returned to the side of the dance floor, it brings them close to Quil, who is close to Captain Kahalar, who seems to be trying to tempt Ewhoza into asking Quil to dance without actually being so rude as to say it outright.

“Miss Linnaeus, you can speak to what a lovely dance it is,” he appeals to her as soon as she's close. “The music is very infectious once you're moving to it.”

Valira smiles at him. He hasn't done anything to offend her, and if they haven't talked yet, she already has the sense that he's cheerful and in charity with the neighborhood, ready to make it a home instead of whatever it was when he was young. “It is, I agree, though no one should be forced to dance.” And then, because Ewhoza has gone back to staring out the window and she wants to needle him even half as much as he did her, all unknowing, she puts on her sweetest smile and makes sure she's addressing the captain directly, ignoring Ewhoza as entirely as she politely can. “What if one ended up with a partner they considered beneath them? No, leave the dancing to those who don't care about that, I say.”

It's a mistake. She knows it as she says it. It makes Lieutenant Colonel Windrose give her a searching, concerned look, first of all, and Valira has no desire for pity or apologies from that quarter. Ewhoza stiffens, but he keeps looking assiduously out the window and doesn't acknowledge the hit. And her dig probably makes Captain Kahalar think either she's a snob or awash with self-pity.

If he does, though, he doesn't show it, and he gives her a quick bow. “Well, I don't care in the least, and if anything, I'm beneath you, Miss Linnaeus. Shall we take the floor?”

“I certainly don't ascribe to any partners being better than others,” she says, perhaps a little too tart, trying to correct any hasty assumptions, and watches his eyebrows go up, though he has the manners not to look at Ewhoza. The lieutenant colonel is still looking at her, and Valira offers her a wince of a smile before letting Captain Kahalar lead her away.

By the time they're halfway down the set, he's told her to call him Lanra, explained a dizzying roster of brothers who are mostly in Hylene and writing them all letters, asked probing questions about Quil with a good deal less subtlety than his sister managed, and generally cemented himself as one of her favorite dancing partners. There's nothing there like an expectation, more the brotherly bluntness she's always been happy to find with Frog, and she smile at him when the dance ends. “Where shall I put you?” he asks. “You've not danced with Kal yet, I think, and he's over with the rest of them now.”

Lieutenant Iorza-Ellerwer is indeed back with his husband and the Windroses and, unfortunately, Ewhoza. Valira smiles at him and looks around, only to find Trilli barreling at the musicians, no doubt intent on wresting a fiddle away to dazzle the crowd for the space of a dance, something she's all too inclined to do when she's gone too long without an appealing partner. “While I'd love to get to know him better, I have a family matter to deal with, do excuse me.”

He follows her gaze and grins at her. “Miss Trillium is a troublemaker.”

“She and Cordelia both,” says Valira, in laughing despair. “We'll teach them manners someday.”

“I'm sure you will.” He gives her another gallant bow. “I'll dance with you again the next time I have the opportunity. And—it's not my place to say. But whatever he said, I'm fairly sure he's feeling wretched about it by now.”

Lanra cements his position as a new friend by not requiring her to make an answer to that, just disappearing with a friendly wave to ask Miss Keene to dance. Valira takes a breath and goes at speed to cut Trilli off before she can convince a musician to give up his seat for the space of a dance, reaching her right as Constance does.

There are only a few dances left in the assembly, and despite Constance's objections, and Arfil's when Constance applies to him for a second opinion, Valira sets herself to making sure the younger girls don't get themselves into some sort of scandal. She sends them off to dance with Idilus's students and, in a signal honor for Cordelia, Major Windrose, and only dances once more herself, with Lieutenant Iorza-Ellerwer, no doubt sent by Lanra.

In the carriage on the way home, Cordelia nods off on Trilli's shoulder, and Trilli is humming in the concentrated kind of way that means the next guest to dine with them is going to be treated to her attempts at writing arias. Poor Idilus. He's always so patient with them.

Constance is watching Quil, eyes glistening just a little in the moonlight that comes through the carriage window. Quil herself is staring dreamily out the window, watching the moon, a smile Valira doesn't recognize on her face, and there's a moment of brief anxiety, the worry brought on by incipient change, before Valira makes herself smile. “The Windroses seemed to like you very much,” she says quietly, quiet enough that she won't draw Trilli's teasing attention.

“They were very kind,” says Quil. Constance is still watching, and now Arfil too. “But even if they can afford another spouse, which I imagine they can, they're terribly happy together. I don't really think they're prospects. Not for me.”

That's wrong, from what Valira saw of them, the way the major smiled and twirled her, the way the lieutenant colonel looked at her, so grave and interested, whenever she spoke, head bent to catch every word in the crowded and noisy room. But it's not for Valira to convince her of that. She'll never believe it, not without seeing it for herself. “No need to say that yet,” she says, the closest thing to encouragement Quil might listen to. “And besides—there's always Captain Kahalar, if they don't suit your fancy.”

Quil purses her lips and finally looks away from the window to give Valira an exasperated look that catches and pinches into a puzzled frown. “And you—is something wrong, Valira? Something has seemed off tonight.”

Now Trilli has stopped humming, and it's only Cordelia who isn't listening, still sleeping innocently away. Trilli has always been foolishly protective of her, even when she was just a child and Arfil offered to take any of the children who wanted to go with Valira. Other cousins cried, reached for her, but Trilli came, and since then, she's seemed to regard Valira as hers to protect even when it's the other way around. Valira isn't going to tell any of them about Major Ewhoza's cold voice drifting out a window, about his summation of her as “lesser,” even if it still stings, but she's especially not going to tell Trilli, who would be likely to call him out or immortalize his faults in song. Valira shakes her head, and takes her own turn to look out at the moon. “No, nothing's wrong. Just tired, that's all.”

*

“Lieutenant Colonel Windrose has asked me to tea,” Quil says when Valira comes in from the fields a few days later, her watercolors tucked under her arm. Her survey of the local wildflowers is going quite well, and she's nearly forgotten about the party at Fairpoint Hold over the past days, or at least has tried to, so it's a surprise to hear.

“That's wonderful,” says Valira, and gives Quil her warmest smile. “Have you told the girls?”

“No, Arfil took them to see Idilus and the note came after that.” Quil's eyes are wide and nervous. “Why would she invite me and no one else?”

There's an answer to that, and it's not one Quil will believe, so really all Valira can do is shrug. “You could always ask her.”

“That would be terribly rude,” says Quil, and hands Valira the note, as though Valira has ever had any luck decoding the behavior of society at all. “What do you think she wants?”

It seems, from what Valira can tell, like a perfectly friendly note. It's graceful enough to say precisely who of the party intends to be at the house for tea—both of the Windroses, as well as Lieutenant Iorza-Ellerwer and Mr. Ellerwer, the single gentlemen in the party intending to be out. It's an uneven number, which is unusual, but not so very much, in the country. They aren't necessarily used to receiving invitations apart, except for Valira's occasional visits with Frog, or Quil and Lauren going shopping, but it's much more common in town, from what Valira hears. If there's an ulterior motive, it's simply the motive of courtship, and there's nothing wrong in that, since it's very clear the Windroses can support another spouse if they so choose. “My best guess is that she wants to be friends.”

Quil frowns at her. “But why me and not you, or … or Mama! Or one of the Zanarams!”

Valira, Constance, and the whole tribe of Zanarams are not as pretty as Quil, but that is a very silly thing to say. “Because you charmed her at the assembly, clearly. Is it so bad to make a new friend? A new bunch of friends, even?”

“You ought to come too.”

Since Majora Ewhoza won't be in attendance, Valira wouldn't actually mind. She and Mr. Ellerwer could talk about matters of mutual interest, and she could keep an eye on the pair who seem to have at least a preliminary interest in her sister, a pair she likes on top of it. But all that comes in the face of an insurmountable obstacle. “I haven't been invited, and this isn't the usual local society that assumes we come as a pair. If you go and you're so terribly uncomfortable, I think they'd indulge you if you hinted that you might want me along as company the next time. But I don't think you'll need me. You found enough to talk about them both with while you were dancing. All you need to do is continue the conversation over tea.”

“I suppose.”

That's as much of a victory as Valira expects for the afternoon, so she turns her attention to practicalities, and looks out at the beautiful sunny afternoon. “It's going to rain tomorrow, though. We ought to send you in the carriage. Make sure you reserve it with Arfil before he goes to see Idilus, or you'll be stuck walking in a downpour.”

“Oh goodness, I don't want to do that,” says Quil, and rushes off to speak to Constance to enlist her help on the matter, and perhaps, Valira hopes, to receive a few hints as to what the Windroses' purpose in inviting her might be that might encourage her.

*

The next afternoon, when Quil is staring out anxiously at the cloudy sky, one of Idilus's younger pupils arrives at an apologetic trot to tell them the carriage axle has snapped and Arfil has seen fit to use it as a tutorial in Mending for some of the students, and won't she please forebear him the lesson.

“We can send him running up to the Hold, they'd no doubt be happy to send a carriage down for you,” Valira offers. “Frog was telling me in town this morning that there's at least one set of very nice horses and a fine carriage in the stable there, you might get quite an exciting ride, even.”

Quil looks at her, horrified. “I will do no such thing. It would be such an imposition, when they were kind enough to invite me in the first place.” She makes a face. “No, it hasn't started raining yet. I'll hurry, take the short way across the fields even if I get a little muddy doing it, and if I get a few raindrops on me, it won't be such a problem.”

Valira wants to point out that Quil hates the rain, and will take any excuse to avoid stepping past the doorstep if it's coming down, but Quil knows that, and pushing it is only going to force Quil to admit that she's looking forward to tea, and why, and that will embarrass them both. “Ask your mother,” she says.

Quil does, and Constance doesn't seem happy about it, but she doesn't have any compelling arguments either, so Quil puts on her bonnet and picks up an umbrella and dashes out the door, promising to be back as soon as she can, though if they could send the carriage for her when Arfil returns, she'd be grateful.

It's only five minutes before the first drops start falling, and Valira thinks about running out to fetch her, but Quil is as stubborn as she is sweet-natured, and once she's decided to go, she's not going to turn around even if she wants to.

Cordelia finds her at the window as the rain starts getting a little more serious just a few minutes later. “You can't do anything about the weather?”

“No, there's no fixing a rainstorm that's got every reason to happen,” says Valira. “I'm not powerful enough to convince it to stop.” Cordelia sighs, and Valira puts her arm around her. “She won't melt, she'll just be unhappy and perhaps a little bedraggled.”

Cordelia frowns at her. “Bedraggled isn't going to get her married, and that's what the Windroses have on their mind, don't they?”

“After one meeting? Probably not. But maybe someday.” Valira grins at her. “They did show a partiality, didn't they?”

Cordelia grins back. “I think so. I don't know if they'd be my choice, of the party at Fairpoint Hold, but she could do far worse, and she'd still be living near enough that we'd still see her all the time.”

And would be well-supported enough to support any of them who don't marry, and support Constance, should she need it, but Cordelia's young for that kind of thinking. She's barely out, and not thinking of the good and bad things about not marrying and looking after her sisters' interests instead. In that spirit, Valira just keeps smiling at her. “Oh? And who would your choice be, then?”

“Well, Major Ewhoza is rather nice-looking, and Belvale Park is apparently quite well-known and its income isn't bad. He might be a bit of a snob, but I could bear that.”

It takes more effort than Valira would like to admit to keep smiling, at that. In the scheme of things, one man calling her lesser isn't such a bad thing. She won't have to talk to him again, most likely, before he returns to Hylene or Belvale Park or anywhere but here. “When Quil is wildly rich being married to the Windroses, I am sure she will personally introduce you to all of the Lieutenant Colonel's brothers, who are very eligible indeed and also, one would hope, not snobs. You don't have to be in such a hurry to marry the first rich man you meet.”

“You have no sense of romance,” Cordelia says, and Trilli comes in to fret about Quil and the rain, and Valira seizes on the opportunity to change the subject.

*

When Arfil finally returns home, muddy and happy with the impromptu lesson he got to teach, Constance reads him a scold and sends the carriage back out to get Quil, who must by then have overstayed her welcome.

The carriage returns, though, without Quil, and with a note addressed to Constance and Valira, not in Quil's hand.

_Dear Mrs. Myale and Miss Linnaeus,_ it runs, in an even hand, _Miss Myale asks me to assure you both that she's perfectly well, and did ask to be returned home, but I fear it may not entirely be the case. In the rain on her walk over, she seems to have caught a chill._

“Arfil, we are going to have a talk about your impromptu lessons,” Valira calls across the downstairs, though Constance is still reading, distress growing more and more evident as she does so.

_Worse,_ the note continues, explaining the distress while Arfil says something not nearly apologetic enough back, _she seems to be having some trouble with a magical condition where odd things will happen when the chill causes her to sneeze. We don't understand it, and are concerned. She claims this isn't unheard of and that you're the best nurse in your household, Miss Linnaeus. Could they spare you for a day or two, until the worst has passed? We of course intend to summon a doctor as well. We can have our carriage sent to you as early as you're ready in the morning. Your servant, Phillipa Windrose._

“Oh no,” says Constance, which sums it up quite well.

Quil's magic is always unpredictable, inclined to make her float or briefly disappear or, on one memorable occasion, summon a unicorn, but it's always been worst when she's sick. Under Idilus's tutelage, it's been better in the past few years, but it's chancy, and with how excited and embarrassed and everything else she's been, her magic is no doubt more than willing to leap out of her control. “I'll go at once,” says Valira, already standing up, ready to go searching for her bag.

“You won't,” says Constance. “Rest first. If they haven't asked for you tonight, then they'll be well enough. The lieutenant colonel's brother is a druid too, perhaps he can brew her a potion that will let her rest safely and quietly until you're there. Should we send Arfil, or ask for Idilus?”

Valira takes Constance's hand and does her best to be reassuring, because she knows how Quil's surges of wild magic, legacies of a disaster they were lucky Arfil saw them through, still terrify her, even when the worst is over. “You know how it is. They can't cure a chill, and the surges are happening because of that and because she's embarrassed. If it lasts much past my arrival, I will send for Idilus right away, but I think I'll do well enough to start off.”

“Of course you will, I wouldn't doubt it.” Constance smiles and brushes Valira's hair away from her face. “I'll pack up some home comforts for Quil and tell the girls and Arfil what's going on, and you should get some rest.”

She won't sleep for worrying about Quil, but it will worry Quil if Valira shows up in the dark and the rain, so Valira reluctantly does as Constance tells her, and is awake half the night, not used to having a bedroom of her own.

*

Despite the Windroses' offer to send a carriage, Valira walks to Fairpoint Hold. It's morning when she's ready to go, and sending word and waiting for a carriage is silly when the rain has cleared into a lovely day and nothing she has to carry is very heavy. Constance frets and offers to send her over in their carriage, but Arfil needs to get to Idilus and the school, and Trilli is supposed to go with him and gets dreadfully impatient on such long walks.

But Valira likes them, so she goes as soon as the mist is off the fields. The storm has left the grass wet and the ground muddy, which isn't good news for her slippers or her hem, but she's not going to pay an afternoon call on the Windroses, she's going to care for Quil.

When she arrives, a butler announces her to a parlor full of people, and Valira has a moment's brief horror that she's not being shown right to her sister before she straightens her shoulders and smiles. They all shoot to their feet, flawlessly courteous, and of course it's the whole household save for Major Windrose. Even Major Ewhoza stands and bows, though of course he couldn't do otherwise.

“Miss Linnaeus, we had planned to send the carriage for you in just a few moments,” Lieutenant Colonel Windrose says upon spotting her, dismayed. “If you had sent a message we would have sent it ages ago. I'm sorry you had to walk.”

“And in the mud, too,” says Lanra, with a smile that invites her to share a joke only slightly more than it mocks her, and Valira refuses to look at her hem.

“Well, no matter.” The lieutenant colonel waves everyone into sitting and comes to join Valira at the door. “Please, I'll show you right to her. Terry is with her just now trying to convince her to eat something. Unless you'd prefer breakfast? You must have left early.”

“I ate,” Valira assures her. “You can send me up with a footman, if you'd prefer to finish your breakfast.”

“I couldn't possibly, and I'd like to check on her as well,” she says, and ushers Valira out of the room. “You're very kind to come.”

“You're very kind to care for her, lieutenant colonel. How is she, really? Her surges can be dangerous, at times.”

“Phi, please, you're a guest and, I hope, a new friend.” She frowns, as she leads Valira through the halls. It's a maze of a building, and easy enough to tell that it was once a fort even if borders have changed enough since then that it's left without nothing to defend, and only the architecture hints at what it used to be. “She did warn us—at length—about the dangerous surges. Something about fire?”

That's a horrible memory, and of course the first thing that would leap to Quil's mind: a lovely summer day, a spell that should have been as easy as breathing for someone of Quil's power, and then a fire that had turned a bed of flowers to dust and singed Quil and Valira both. Constance and Arfil had told her, since she was still new to their household, that it had happened more in the first days after Quil's magic was awakened going through a portal. Quil has nightmares about it, she knows, all the ways her magic could hurt the people she loves, even with the training Idilus has given her. “It's been a long time since she's had such a bad one. I'll see her, though, and do my best to help her chill, which will help her magic stay in control. There shouldn't be danger.”

“I'm relieved. She was so insistent, and so concerned.”

“She always is.”

A smile makes its way briefly across Phi's face, there and then gone, a good assumption confirmed, perhaps, and then they make one last turn and stop outside a room with the door left open and a maid hovering awkwardly nearby, a concession to propriety that Valira appreciates, even when presumably nobody here would gossip about Quil's illness. Inside, she can hear a man talking—Major Windrose, no doubt. From Phi's smile, her assumption must be right, and a second later, Phi taps gently at the door, the maid stepping back a few rapid paces. Valira thinks she recognizes one of the local girls, but can't be sure.

“It's me,” says Phi, low and fond. “Miss Linnaeus walked over and is here to see her sister.”

Valira likes her all the more, for so easily calling Valira and Quil sisters, with their different surnames and very different looks. Then again, Phi with her many brothers, none related, knows that kind of situation better than most. “Quil?” she calls, and peers around the door.

Quil is enthroned on a big comfortable bed, laden with cushions, a room all to herself and nearly twice the size of the room they share at home. She's wearing a dressing gown several sizes too big, and seems flustered, which might have something to do with the tray of toast and eggs in her lap and Major Windrose in a chair pulled up next to the bed with a book in his hand, finger marking the place like he might have been reading to her. “Valira,” she says, somewhere between relieved and worried, and completely stuffed up. “I wasn't expecting you so soon.”

“I walked over. No need to bother a carriage.” Valira comes in without being invited, and smiles at the major when he vacates his chair, so she can take his place. “Has it been very bad? Everyone is very concerned and sends their love, and Arfil asks if you'd like Idilus to come, in case you need a Counterspell.”

Quil looks over Valira's shoulder, and after a moment, she shakes her head. “No, you'll do well for now. If I don't recover soon I'll ask for him, though. I just hate to interrupt when I know he has those visiting students coming soon.”

“He would come,” Valira says, but she drops it. She wouldn't want to bother him either. She looks over her shoulder instead, to find the Windroses both standing in the doorway, holding hands, watching with just a hint of anxiety. “What does Mr. Ellerwer say?”

“A common enough chill, except for the surges of magic,” says the major. “We're happy to host her as long as she needs—and you too, Miss Linnaeus, for comfort and healing and propriety all.”

“Valira, please, if I'm staying,” she says. They don't stand on formality, so she won't, and judging from the smile on the major's face, and his instant insistence that she call him Terry, it's the right choice to make. “I don't require any entertainment or anything like that. Quil and I will do well enough here.”

“Valira,” says Quil, horrified. “You can't just shut yourself up in my sickroom with me. At least get out and enjoy the grounds. They were telling me that Iain is trying to make the gardens as beautiful as they could be, you'd love to see that, wouldn't you?”

“I would,” Valira allows, and thinks that even if she did want to stay in the sickroom the whole time, it wouldn't give Quil a chance to spend time with Phi and Terry, and that would be a shame, considering how besotted she already is. Every time she leaves it, though, she has a chance to run into Major Ewhoza, and she doesn't want that. She suspects he doesn't, either. “Well, we'll see. I still don't want to leave you much.” She twists to look at the door, the two of them standing there. “Or interrupt the easy running of your household.”

Terry waves a hand. “We already have guests, what's a few more? If only you weren't ill, Quil, we'd make a proper party of it, there are enough of us to make up a little set, though I don't know what we'd do for music.”

Quil smiles, and then coughs, and then sneezes, and then, with an expression of alarm, starts floating off the bed. Valira, before she can go heading for the ceiling, seizes both sides of the blankets, wrapping her into a tube that she can hold onto. A second later, Phi and Terry are next to her, holding on one on each side, instead of sprawling half across the bed like Valira. “Oh, I'm so sorry,” Quil says from above them, sounding like she'd rather be sinking into the floor than flying up to the ceiling. “This is the third time this has happened since last night, Valira.”

“We will just have to cure your chill very quickly,” she says, leaving their hosts to keep Quil from flying away as she rummages in her bag for the first of the potions she brought to try. “What else has happened? Nothing awful, I hope?”

“No, nothing awful, Arfil's protections are working on that front. Though I did wake in the night to a unicorn in the room, and it's a miracle it didn't break anything before it disappeared.”

Phi, on the far side of the bed, is hidden from Valira's view, but she takes a quick look at Terry and finds him staring at Quil, eyes very wide. Apparently she didn't mention the unicorn over breakfast. Valira ducks her head to her bag to hide her smile. “I'm glad it was nothing worse, then. And hopefully you'll stop surging once I've helped your chill a bit.” She pulls out the first potion, which always takes care of Trilli's sniffles when she's complaining, stuffed up and voice crackling, that she can't sing. “Here, take a drink of that.”

Quil looks down at her, helpless. “Maybe once I'm back on the bed?”

“It shouldn't take long,” Valira tells Terry and Phi, who both seem alarmed at that. “A minute at most, usually.”

“We can certainly hold on that long,” says Terry, with a smile for Quil that she doesn't notice because she's too busy staring at the ceiling she's much too close too, mortified.

If they keep talking about Quil's magic surges in front of attractive near-strangers, Quil might try to escape before she's healthy again, so Valira looks around for other subjects and settles on the book now splayed open on the seat Terry was sitting in, abandoned in haste when he moved to keep Quil from floating away. “What were you reading over breakfast?”

“Just a book brought from Hylene, since there's not much library here,” says Terry with a shrug, smiling at her over his shoulder. “A novel, set in the Underdark. A comedy, if you'll believe it.”

“Funny things must happen even underground,” Valira points out.

“Well, this K.B. is satirizing them terribly, the society in one of their cities, so I don't know if the rich and powerful down there would agree.”

Valira asks a few more polite questions about the book until Quil starts drifting slowly back onto the bed, and then, while Phi and Terry are both trying to figure out their reactions and what to do with the blanket now that it's no longer needed, she offers Quil the first of her potions as soon as her head touches the pillow. “That should relieve the sneezing, at least, and give you a chance to feel a little better.”

Phi and Terry exchange a look and settle the blanket back on Quil properly before Terry speaks. “We'll leave you two to your business, and check in on you soon. You'll let us know if you need anything, either of you? And Valira, you're welcome to join the rest of us for dinner.”

“That's very kind, but—”

“She'll join you,” says Quil, and ignores Valira's glare. “You can't just stay here and nursemaid me the whole time, you'll end up in a decline yourself, and Mama will have to come take care of us both.”

Phi laughs. “I'll let the two of you argue about that yourselves, but you're most welcome, I promise. We'll be around all day, should you need help with any further magic surges.”

That makes Quil go back to staring at the ceiling in horror, and Valira, with apologies, shows their hosts out of the room and shuts the door firmly behind them before she turns back to Quil, who seems pale and whose breathing is heavy with congestion. Rain has never agreed with her. Arfil will be awash with guilt. “Is the potion helping?” she asks.

“I feel less like sneezing,” Quil says, and covers her face with her hands. “I can't believe this happened. Couldn't the chill have waited until I got home?”

“They aren't making you feel a burden, are they?”

That makes her lower her hands instantly. “No, no, of course not, they've been kindness personified, the Windroses particularly. But I hate to trespass on that kindness, and of course I'm afraid I'll sneeze and do some real damage, flames or something just as bad.”

Valira looks around the room. It's been hastily decorated to comfort, tapestries that don't match thrown up against cold stone walls, and a rug that doesn't quite fit. The housekeeper must be in agonies over it, but the house has been shut up for so long that of course they don't have guest rooms ready, beyond the ones the residents are already using. “I'm worried about you if there are flames, not the house. It's stone, it can weather worse.” She peers at one of the tapestries, which is a surprisingly gory scene, put behind the wash basin like that might hide the worse parts. Probably a legacy from Crestmaker, who Valira is gladder every minute she never met. “And I don't think they'll miss the furnishings that much. They would, however, be very unhappy if you got hurt. Which is why we're trying to prevent surges.”

“I hate this,” says Quil, misery in every word.

Valira goes to join her, sitting on the edge of the bed. She's hardy. She probably won't catch whatever it is, and if she does, she's not going to set anything on fire if she starts sneezing. She can afford to give Quil some comfort. And if she gets ill, she'll have a chance to avoid Major Ewhoza at the dinner table. “Well, I'm here to keep you company, and between me and Mr. Ellerwer, we'll have you hale and healthy in no time at all.”

Quil sighs and lays back on the bed. “They've been so kind,” she says, sounding just as miserable as before.

“I'm sure they have,” says Valira, and goes about the business of trying to cure Quil's sneezes before her magic leaps out of her again.

*

Valira wishes she could miss dinner, but she doesn't have the excuse. Quil, dressed in a nightgown Phi lent her when it became obvious she would spend the night, offers the dress she wore to their tea, since Valira's walking dress isn't good enough to wear in company, and promptly falls asleep, so Valira can't pretend to be entertaining her.

Lanra is the one who comes to the sickroom to fetch her, with a smile on his face and a courtly arm held out. “I told Phi and Terry they couldn't come, they would have just stayed to make sure your sister is well enough, and then we would be without our hosts at dinner. How is she, by the way?”

“Getting better,” Valira assures him, and doesn't comment on his implications that Phi and Terry are besotted. She's fairly sure it's true, but it's early to mention it, and Quil is in a terrible position if she makes her interest obvious and they turn out to only be flirting. “There was a bit of excitement with a sneezing fit this afternoon, but she's well enough now.” Quil turned into a very lovely potted plant, in fact, but she was so embarrassed when Valira restored her that she begged her not to mention specifics. “Another day or two, and she'll be well enough to go home.”

Lanra shrugs. “We're happy enough to have her. Nice to have someone new and cheerful around the place. Well, nice when she's not sick, that is.”

There's a story there that quite likely has to do with Crestmaker and why all his wards fled Tyneshire after his death. Valira isn't going to ask for it, though she'd like to ask why they invited Major Ewhoza if they were hoping for cheerful company. “I'm sure she'd be happy to spend time with all of you whenever you please, and under better circumstances.”

“Is that so,” he says, not really a question, and just wryly enough that Valira gives him a sharp look. He's smiling, at least. It could be that he's just amused by his sister and her husband's obvious attentions to Quil. She'll hope that's the case, anyway.

Whatever his intentions, he doesn't share them, or press any further, as they go down and meet everyone for dinner. Phi and Terry are concerned for Quil, full of questions and solicitations and offers to sit at her sickbed while Valira gets some fresh air, since they hear she has druidic talents. Iain talks to her about his plans for the gardens, and his husband, who encourages her to call him Kal within minutes, asks about places to take walks and rides while they're in residence, an easy enough question to answer.

Ewhoza is a silent presence on the other side of the table until, with the last course, Lanra clears his throat and speaks directly to him. “Have you heard from your cousin since you arrived in Tyneshire?”

“Only a brief letter. She keeps herself busy.”

That's forbidding. Whenever he speaks, he seems to try to make it as hard as possible for any conversation to continue to include him. Lanra, however, is unabashed, and turns to Valira. “Don't all young people? You must know, with two young sisters of your own, and our youngest brothers are the same. Always some new cantrip to show off, or a new parry with the sword, a ballad learned or a cushion embroidered or some other such thing. I've always heard Miss Denrathy spoken of as accomplished for her age, Ewhoza.”

“I am pleased to hear good of her.”

Even Lanra seems cowed in the face of that, but Terry picks up the slack in the conversation with ease, a gentle smile on his face. “It seems everyone I hear of is accomplished—every time I'm introduced to someone the word comes up. I'd say either it's overused or that everyone really is that impressive, and I hope for the latter.”

“If it's said about everyone, it isn't really anything impressive,” Ewhoza points out. “Perhaps people say that too few things lead to accomplishment. I'd say, if you want it to mean something, you should expect a breadth of talent—magic, weapons, crafts, education—that few have.”

Valira feels the sting of that enough that she wants to mention her own not inconsiderable talents, but then again, she doesn't really care for Major Ewhoza's good opinion. “Well, we'll pay the compliment to your absent cousin and not discuss its application to anyone else,” she says, a little more acerbic than she means to be.

“I meant no insult to your own sisters,” he says, and that's a little warmer than she's heard him yet. “Or to you, for that matter. I just think if something can be said about everyone, there's not much use saying it.”

There's a little gap in the conversation, Valira having no way to respond to that politely, and after a moment, Kal picks up on a different topic completely, and Valira pays attention to the conversation and as little as possible to the mostly-silent Major Ewhoza. When she happens to look at him, she catches his eyes a few times, but he doesn't say anything, and Valira isn't about to ask him any questions. As soon as there's an excuse to check on Quil, she goes.

*

Quil's fever spikes that evening—not unexpected, her chills tend to run to fevers—but Valira's potions don't do much to fix it, and Quil's magic gets restless too. Valira does her best to take care of it, but the surges have a different idea: Quil's face screws up while Valira is holding a cool cloth to her head, and she's suddenly most of the way across the room, sitting in a heap on the rug, a Blink cast a second before her magic leaps out of her in fire, missing Valira but singeing her terribly. Valira casts Create Water fast enough to keep the fire from spreading, and uses the rest of her magic healing Quil as well as she can, and by then the Windroses are there, brought by an alarmed maid.

Over Quil's objections, they carry her back to bed, ignore her miserable apologies, and ask Valira what can be done. “I'm going to give her a sleeping potion, if she'll allow it,” says Valira, fussing over Quil and the ruined nightgown she refused to allow Phi to replace. “Her magic never surges when she's in healing sleep, even if she sneezes, so everything should be safe until morning. If you could send for Arfil, and for a doctor, I'd be grateful.”

“I don't want to make trouble,” says Quil, eyes wide and anxious, tone slurred with exhaustion and the remnants of pain even though Valira thinks she healed her well enough.

Valira opens her mouth to reassure her, but Phi beats her to it, kneeling by the bed and taking Quil's hand. “You couldn't possibly. We'll make sure that the doctor and Arfil are sent for first thing in the morning, Valira.”

Quil objects a few more times, as confused from her blushes as from her fever, but eventually she's convinced, and Phi and Terry leave, both of them sober and concerned, and not long after, a maid appears with a fresh nightgown. Quil is fairly easily convinced to change, and then she seems more relieved than anything to take a sleeping potion and let Valira tend to her without danger.

Valira stays up most of the night, but Quil's fever has broken by morning, and she carries the good news to breakfast, though she's still very pleased that the doctor and Arfil have already been sent for. Everyone is solicitous over breakfast, asking questions about her and about Quil. Even Major Ewhoza deigns to tell her that she seems tired, and should sit down and rest for a few minutes until the doctor's arrival.

Before she can do something as dangerous as liking him for that, the doctor does arrive, and Valira shows him up to where Quil is still sleeping. Luckily, it doesn't take him long to examine her and assure Valira that the worst is past and that if it weren't for her surges she would be able to go home the next day, most likely, and that even with her surges a few more days should be more than sufficient.

By the time Arfil arrives, with both of the girls in tow, Cordelia anxious and wide-eyed and Trilli concerned but also, Valira suspects, mostly come to snoop on the household, Valira can pass on the good news, and show Arfil to Quil and let him give her a charm that might lessen the effects of the surges for a few days, even if it saps some of her energy.

“How is she?” Arfil asks when they leave her in a sleep brought on by her own body rather than by one of their potions.

Valira doesn't pretend to misunderstand him. “She's miserable because she's inconveniencing them, and then that there's been fire for the first time in years, so it's worse. Especially because she ruined some very ugly cushions. Terry even said they were ugly.”

“We'll get her safe home as soon as we can, and I'm sure you and the Windroses will reassure her as much as possible. Now, we've left the girls with the residents of the house, and we'll have to get back to them.” Arfil offers her a companionable arm and she leads him through the winding paths of Fairpoint Hold to the parlor where Trilli and Cordelia are waiting with everyone else, Trilli in the middle of a speech that has Lanra biting a lip on his laugh, Phi and Terry smiling, and Iain wide-eyed at the rate she can speak when she has a mind to.

“There you are, Valira!” says Trilli, breaking off in the middle of whatever she was saying. “I was just telling them all about how they won't be the newest in the neighborhood anymore, with those students coming to spend a term with Idilus. Twenty, he told us yesterday! And all eligible, no doubt.”

“Trillium,” Valira says in despair, and turns to the Windroses, letting Arfil free to sit on a sofa with Trilli and Cordelia as if that will dampen their enthusiasms at all. “Idilus's students are always excellent additions to local society,” she tries. “And it will be nice to welcome them to the neighborhood rather than be welcomed, won't it?”

Terry smiles at her, and Trilli, never one to be checked before she's ready, breaks in again. “You could welcome them properly! It's been too long since there was a ball thrown in this house. You could welcome the students! Or celebrate Quil's recovery!”

“Oh, please say you will,” says Cordelia, who usually has the more sense of the two of them, hands clasped together in excitement.

“I won't prematurely schedule a party with Miss Myale still so ill upstairs,” says Phi, and manages to sound kind rather than reproachful, which is a good deal better than Valira would do, if she could manage speech. Lanra has given up and turned his face away to keep the dignity of the young ladies from being offended at his laughter. “But when she's properly well, I think a ball here sounds delightful.”

“Does it?” asks Major Ewhoza, acerbic enough to make Valira forget that she's embarrassed by Trilli's manners and start wanting to defend her.

Terry just laughs at him, though. “Haoti, you would be more than welcome to retreat to your room with a glass of what you like best and a book, we all know how you feel about balls, but Phi and I came to this neighborhood to make it a home, and that includes joy and parties. Miss Cordelia, Miss Trillium, when your sister is better you can name the date, as far as I'm concerned.”

“Or at least quickly expect invitations,” Phi interposes. “Though you will have to advise us, to some extent, as to where our invitations should be directed. The neighborhood has changed so dramatically since I was young. Mr. Idilus's school hadn't yet been built, and Mrs. Zanaram was just a girl barely meeting her husband.”

“If I'd been ten years older,” Lanra says with mocking wistfulness. “If ever she is widowed, you can be sure I'll show up at her door.”

“As though she'd have you,” says Terry, with a grin for him. After a glance around the room, lingering on Ewhoza, he turns to Valira. “You'll have to forgive my nosiness—you and Mr. Frog Zanaram are often spoken of together, and I did see you dancing at the ball in Windell. Is there an understanding?”

It's a bit of a bald question, from someone she's met so recently, but it's not the first time she's heard it, either. And, after he's just so obviously let them in on family teasing, maybe he's trying to expand it out, in his way. Or maybe, judging from the quick look Phi throws at him, she's mentioned her suspicions that Valira overheard her conversation with Major Ewhoza at the ball to him and he's trying obliquely to hint at it. “Nothing of the sort,” she says, as cheerfully as she can. “He's all ready to set up an establishment and claims I'm too much of a romantic.”

“And the situations don't suit,” Arfil says, as easily as anything, and Valira tries not to color at the obvious implication that neither of them has enough money to support them both, Mrs. Zanaram with five children and Valira living on Arfil's mercy.

“It is always good to know the lay of the land,” says Phi.

“We're quite happy to tell you who is romantically attached to whom in the neighborhood if you wish,” says Cordelia, a bit too obviously. Valira winces her way into a look at Major Ewhoza, who looks like he's swallowed something unpleasant.

“No, you must leave us some mystery,” says Lanra, more gallantly than they deserve. “Tell us about the studies you all make with Idilus instead, I hear you young ladies are all prodigious spellcasters.”

That's safe enough territory, even if Cordelia resents sometimes that she has no particular affinity for any branches of magic like the rest of them do, and Valira is relieved when the subject stays safe until the proper time for a call runs out and the three of them leave, offering to come back immediately or send Constance if Quil takes a turn for the worse again.

Valira knows she should probably apologize for her family, for the pressure on Phi and Terry for a ball and the sly insinuations about any growing attachment they might have, for Arfil's frankness, but she doesn't know where to begin, and she thinks there's only one person in the room bothered by it. Instead, she excuses herself and shuts herself away with Quil again, and has the reward of seeing her much better the next time she wakes up.

*

“Are you writing Estara?” Lanra asks Major Ewhoza the next afternoon, when Quil has been installed on the sofa in the library to be waited upon hand and foot and Valira has by necessity followed her into company.

Ewhoza looks up from the letter he's been applying himself to for as long as Valira has been in the room. “Yes. I owed her one, I told you.”

“Yes, but I didn't know if you'd moved on to writing one of your business associates or something. You do write a great many letters. Ask her how she's getting on with that defense I taught her, will you?” Lanra turns to Valira. “You'd like Estara Denrathy. A very frank young woman, and terrifying with a weapon in her hand.”

“Don't even think about it,” Ewhoza says, and it sounds like an affectionate tease more than a serious order, to Valira's surprise. She wasn't sure Ewhoza knew how to tease, let alone be affectionate.

“Oh, I wouldn't ever. She'd string me up by my guts for even thinking of it.”

“She would,” says Ewhoza with clear pride, and there, Valira can find one thing about him to admire without reserve, that it's clear he cares for his cousin as much as she cares for hers, and wants her able to protect herself.

“You really ought to invite her, as long as you're staying,” says Phi, looking up from her own letter. She and Ewhoza have been sharing the best light by the window easily, with the casual manner that betrays their habits. “We would have welcomed her, especially now that we know there's society her age.”

“You'd welcome anyone,” Ewhoza rejoins right away, and Valira tries not to wince, or to look at Quil, reading a book with Terry next to her, occasionally offering tea or pastry or something else tempting, or tucking the blanket more firmly around her to keep her chill from returning. “Anyone recommended by a friend or a brother, anyway. Anything they want you consider your duty—you'd leave here tomorrow, if Lady Gariel wrote, or Ronan, or any of them.”

“As though an unhappy letter from Star wouldn't send you galloping back to check on her.” Phi smiles at him. “And you say that like it's a bad thing, but I don't plan to consider love of my family a flaw. If I'd run off for family, what's so wrong with that?”

“Nothing, of course. As always, I can find no fault with you.”

His voice is dry, but Phi smiles and Valira realizes, with a start, that they're actually friends. It's hard to imagine anyone being friends with Major Ewhoza, but he isn't just tolerated here, with pity or hopes of society connections. That's shocking enough to keep her silent, staring down at the book of wildflower illustrations she isn't really reading as she waits for Phi's answer. “And as always, you know very well that I have my flaws, but I wouldn't call my willingness to drop everything when I'm needed by someone I care for one of them.”

“No. Nor would I.” Valira does look up, then, because there's a story behind that the same way there's a story behind her and Trilli's presence in Arfil's house, and she doesn't think Ewhoza means to be confiding in them. Lanra, standing over by the window, is watching too, more serious than she's seen him before. At least Quil and Terry are occupied with their books, and Iain and Kal, at some remove from the rest of them, are in their own world, their conversation a quiet hum in the room.

Neither Phi nor Ewhoza seems to know how to move on, and Lanra doesn't seem willing to speak, and if the silence grows any heavier, it will draw attention, even with Iain and Kal keeping the room from falling into awkward silence. Valira makes a show of looking up from her book and pretending the last several exchanges haven't happened. “How old is your cousin, major?”

She isn't fooling anyone by her attempt to appear blasé, but Major Ewhoza gives her a startled look, and then inclines his head. “Sixteen, Miss Linnaeus.”

“Just older than mine, then,” she says, and doesn't know how to say more without acknowledging what she would prefer not to. Lanra, though, rescues them all, bringing up Miss Denrathy's tenure at a finishing school, which went very poorly indeed, and the way society already trembles at the thought of her having a Season in Hylene in a few years.

“We should entertain Quil better than this, on her first day back in society,” Terry says to the room at large when there's a lag in the conversation, and over Quil's quiet protests stands up and crosses the room, squeezing his wife's shoulder, checking in, eyes traveling over Ewhoza and Lanra and Valira as well. He's very observant, then. Valira usually knows when she's being watched. “We have an array of instruments. Perhaps those who play could give us a concert?”

That draws Iain and Kal's attention, and draws smiles from them too. “We've been learning something new, since we had access to a proper music room again,” says Kal. “Shall we go next door and play? Miss Linnaeus, do you play?”

“The lap harp, yes, but you should go first. I'm nothing impressive, and besides, Quil has heard all the songs I can play before.”

Quil says something complimentary about her even as she says nobody needs to go to any trouble for her, but she's very kindly chivvied to the music room by Phi, who supports her with an unwavering arm the whole way, with Kal falling in on her other side to ask about Quil's own musical accomplishments, which aren't as many as her magical ones.

The music room is as lovely and as little-used as everything in Fairpoint Hold. The showier pieces, the kind that are as much art as instrument, look old and barely-used. The newer ones are simpler, and they seem geared for use. There are a few shelves with an array of instruments Trilli would die to get her hands on, neatly organized but, as far as she can tell, untouched, and when she asks about them for Trilli's sake, Phi explains she chose one of all the instruments her siblings can play, so when they visit they'll be there for them.

Quil, on hearing that, looks overcome, but Valira can't do anything about that right now, and she suspects that even if Phi and Terry are just flirting to be kind, they would be just as kind telling her that they aren't interested in another spouse, so maybe she doesn't need to do anything at all.

Iain and Kal do well with their duets, Kal singing to Iain's accompaniment, moving from folk song to army marching song to aria and back again, smiling at each other often. Valira watches them for a while, until she notices Ewhoza watching her. He's far too good at keeping his face blank for her to know what he's thinking, but she raises her eyebrows at him, waiting to see if he stops.

Instead, he comes over, stands next to her seat, and, in between songs, Iain and Kal are having a conference about what to play next and Lanra is asking Quil what Cordelia plays, when forced to work on her ladylike accomplishments. Next to them, Terry is trying to tease Phi into playing the spinet, which apparently she's making tentative efforts to learn to play now that she's retired from the army but isn't willing to exhibit in public yet.

Everyone else is talking. Valira may as well do it too. “Do you play anything?”

“No. My father didn't consider it a necessary part of my education, and then I was in the army. Estara plays a little, but she doesn't have much interest in it.”

“Ah. Then you must be bored. I would have expected you to retire, then. You must be used to city entertainments, no matter how good the Ellerwers are.”

“I don't have enough knowledge of music to say who's good and who's bad, but I don't care to remove myself from company, or why would I be here?”

“A very good question.” She hopes he takes that as a tease, and not as a question she really has, which is closer to the truth. It's rude to ask about her hostess's friendship with this extremely unpleasant man who seems determined to talk to her after dismissing her before he'd ever exchanged words with her. “It's a relief to know that your standard isn't high, though. I feel much less nervous about playing now.”

“Would you have been nervous before? You don't seem easily made nervous.”

Valira twists just enough to frown at him, and still can't tell if that's a dig or a tease or a simple statement of fact. His face isn't expressive, and it makes it hard to know, but considering what she knows of him, she'd guess it to be a dig, though about what she doesn't know. “I suppose I'm not,” she says, and turns back.

Ewhoza doesn't speak again, and it's not long before Kal claims he's in need of a drink before he could consider singing again, and Valira takes their place, tuning the lap harp that's taken off one of Phi's shelves and paying attention to it, not to the people with half their attention on her, the other half absorbed with each other.

Except Major Ewhoza. Valira doesn't look up often, but she knows, the whole time she plays, that he's watching, and can't think why.

*

The next morning, Quil wakes with energy, and a level of restlessness, too. She still coughs herself into a surge that makes Valira, Iain, and a very alarmed maid turn invisible for a minute, but she's impatient with their potions and with any continued attempts to coddle her. Phi and Valira take her walking on the grounds of Fairpoint Hold, and find Ewhoza and Lanra walking around them too, and Valira somehow finds herself with the two gentlemen, and the awkward silence with Ewhoza that she can't break, though Lanra tries his best.

When the fresh air gives Quil more energy rather than less, Phi invites her down for dinner, which means Valira will have to go as well, and makes her wonder if she could just walk back home, and leave Quil for her last few days of recovery alone. There are enough people in the house to chaperone her.

But Quil is smiling, and nervous, and if Valira goes, Quil will insist that she should as well, when she should be resting to make sure she's fully recovered and not likely to set a carriage on fire as she travels. So she puts on a smile and goes down to dinner with her sister.

“We'll be planning that ball in no time,” Terry says when he spots them, Quil's color high and her eyes brighter than they've been in days.

That makes Quil duck her head, though. “They really shouldn't have been asking you about that. I'm mortified they did, really, there's no need for any kind of fuss.”

Phi smiles at her, gentle and kind and, Valira hopes, perhaps a little besotted. “Nonsense. It isn't a party just to celebrate your health, after all. We'd been wanting an excuse, and Miss Cordelia and Miss Trillium gave us something to live up to. Anyway, it will take more than a bit of time to prepare for, when it's been so long since the Hold held guests.”

Quil seems a little mollified by that, and Kal is the one to step forward and escort Quil to her place at the table, giving her a moment to breathe and ask him about what he's been doing with his day, and letting Valira slip into her own place among them, smiling briefly at Lanra. Conversation over dinner is easy, and they all move to the parlor together afterward, nobody choosing to linger over brandy.

Outside of the prescribed seating of dinner, though, Valira finds herself in a slightly uncomfortable position—Quil and the Windroses would welcome her into their conversation, of course, but she'd rather leave them alone for Quil's sake. And the Ellerwers are very kind and polite, but they must be newlyweds, because they far prefer their own society to anyone else's. And speaking to Lanra means, too often, speaking to Ewhoza.

Lanra, though, perhaps seeing how torn she is, doesn't leave her to make the choice, offering a hand before she can sit down. “You're an outdoors sort of person and you must be ready to pace a hole in the floor by now. I can't politely offer you the outdoors, but we can at least take a walk around the room.” Walking in circles around a room isn't nearly as good as walking in gardens or fields or forests, but it's better than staying still, and Valira offers her arm for him to take with alacrity. Of course, as soon as they've gone a few steps, Lanra turns to Ewhoza. “I know you haven't been out riding or walking as much as your wont, Haoti. Care to join us?”

Valira tries to keep her face neutral, tries to keep her wince to herself, as they turn to face him. They've barely been in the room a minute, but Ewhoza is already sitting, a book on his lap, and there's something like a smile on his face as he looks up at Lanra. “I can think of no purpose your walk around the room could have that would be better served by my involvement.”

“What purpose could a walk around the room possibly have?” Valira blurts, baffled.

He tilts his head, considering her. “Well, you might have secrets to tell each other, and in that case, I have no right to hear them. Or you might be displaying yourselves, in which case I'm a better audience than participant. Either way, I'm best served right here.”

“Displaying ourselves,” Valira says, far too loud. “What are we, peacocks?”

“Whatever he's implying, he's clearly not fit for our company right now,” says Lanra, with a warning look over Valira's head, and starts walking, though he makes no particular effort to lower his voice when he speaks to her. Valira is just very lucky that Quil finds the Windroses so distracting, she would hate this. “How are we to punish him, then, Valira? Since he's being less than gallant.”

Valira looks at Ewhoza, whose expression is papered over with boredom and annoyance again, his unassailable pride that he pretends is dignity. She hasn't known him for long, but she knows the difference between those things. She knows the one thing that can always get under the skin of men like him. “Laugh at him, I suppose. I doubt he'd like to be teased.”

Lanra grins at her, though there's a quirk of his eyebrow that makes her think he understands how serious she is. “And who would? What will we tease him about, though? Our Major Ewhoza is far too brave and dignified to tease, I'd say. What faults can he possibly have?”

That's a tease in itself, and one that could easily tear Ewhoza apart, if he were the kind of man to feel guilt about his coldness and his closed-mindedness. Unfortunately, she doesn't think he's that kind of man. “Everyone has faults,” she says with a shrug. “Though admitting to them is something else.”

“Do you admit to yours?” Lanra asks, with what seems to be honest curiosity.

Valira is brimming with faults, no matter with her new family says. “Too prone to acting without thinking. And speaking without thinking.” Something in her tone catches Quil's attention, and she frowns over her shoulder, but Valira shakes her head. She isn't going to talk about her first family now, not with Ewhoza so obviously listening and pretending he isn't. “Do you admit yours?”

“We share faults, I think,” he says with a shrug. “Come on, Haoti. After the lady was so honest, can you be less so?”

If she thought Ewhoza was closed off and shuttered before, he's even more so now, and Valira almost intercedes, calls Lanra off, except that Ewhoza looks at her, and squares his shoulders, and answers. “Stubbornness, perhaps. In my actions and in my opinions. I don't allow myself to be swayed, and once I know ill of someone, it's difficult to forget it.”

Valira would love to lash out, to say something about forgiveness, but there's a story here she doesn't know. It's in Lanra's face, the teasing falling away from it. It's in the set of Phi's shoulders, as she carefully doesn't look at them, as if she might intervene, and in the look that Iain and Kal exchange. “Well,” she says instead, light and easy as if she were talking of portals to Quila and Cordelia, “I can't find a way to tease you about that, so I suppose we shall have to leave your faults be, major.”

She's on intimate terms with everyone else in the house, free and easy with their names, but Ewhoza doesn't suggest she use his first name, and she doesn't offer hers either. Instead, he gives her a quick nod, and then Kal captures his attention and Lanra makes good on his promise to walk around the room, and she's free enough to ignore him for the rest of the night.

Quil is tired that night, still too weak to take so much excitement, but she frowns at Valira nonetheless when Valira tries to chivvy her into bed. “You and Major Ewhoza,” she says, and it's interesting that even Quil, so obviously beloved in this company, doesn't have the liberty of his first name. She's not surprised. If he's too much of a snob for a druid whose family connections are at best eccentric, a sorceress whose magic leaps out of her when she sneezes, without a dowry to her name, won't be much higher in his esteem. “I hope he hasn't said anything. Or done anything. I wondered if … do you know him from before?”

Valira can't imagine Ewhoza, in all his stiffness and pride, having anything good to say about her family of eccentrics, about their hidden forest home that had never hosted a house party, about their stubborn love of peace and what one girl did to a highwayman who got too close to their sanctuary, who threatened her cousins. “No, Quil. Nothing like that.” That would almost be easier to talk about than stung pride and a feeling like he's always watching her for missteps. “I just dislike him. You know I can't like too many people at once, it's bad for my mood. Everyone else here is so personable I almost had to dislike him.”

Quil frowns at her, and if she had more energy, Valira thinks she would probably argue, either to defend Ewhoza with her usual good nature or to pry more out of Valira. As it is, she yawns and seems to silently admit defeat. “Fine. But you'll tell me if it's anything worse, won't you?”

Frog knows. That's plenty. Quil doesn't need to carry all of Valira's humiliating secrets. “I'll tell you anything you need to know,” she promises, and Quil frowns even more, but she doesn't argue.

*

It's two more days before Quil insists she's well enough to go home in the carriage and finish her recovery at home. The Windroses tell her at least a dozen times that she can stay, but Iain and Valira and the doctor called from town all agree that there's no more chance of a surge than usual, and when Quil says, low and blushing, that she really does want to go home, they're released with good grace. Arfil comes to fetch them in the carriage, and for once doesn't talk about Idilus or his lessons at the school, but asks after Quil's health and Valira's enjoyment of the library at Fairpoint Hold, telling them bits of gossip gleaned from town while they were gone.

Valira is home five minutes before she realizes that his avoidance of talking about the school was a preemptive mercy, because it's all that Cordelia and Trilli can talk about.

To their credit, they ask Quil how she is, and Trilli asks if the Windroses really mean it about the ball, but then she asks if they plan to invite Idilus's newest students, and they're off.

Judging by Constance's fond smile as she fusses over Quil, quietly bringing her tea and a hot water battle and the quilt that always stays on Constance's own bed, Idilus's master students have been a frequent topic of conversation. Valira probably should have expected it. Every three or four years, a group of students hoping to earn their seal of mastery in wizardry stop for some months at Idilus's school as part of a rotation of all the best establishments in the country, and they're of just the age and power to be intriguing. Last time they came through, Trilli and Cordelia were too young to be intrigued, and Valira and Quil were still adjusting to the difficulties of their lives. This time, with all of them more settled and the girls out in local society, they'll see much more of them.

Arfil, to his credit, does talk about their goals and mastery projects, but Trilli and Cordelia spend far more time giggling over which ones are the best-looking.

Maybe, if Valira scolded them, they would stop, but Quil seems to find it funny, letting them sit on the edge of her bed and chatter at her about all of it, at least until she falls asleep, and it doesn't do any harm to let them dream about people who won't consider them old enough or interesting enough to court yet.

No matter how exhausting the younger girls can sometimes be, it's good to be home, with the family she knows and loves, and away from Fairpoint Hold, where no matter how fond most of the residents are of Quil and for her sake Valira, nothing ever feels quite comfortable, with Major Ewhoza's unfriendly eyes on her and unwillingness to shut himself away in his room if he dislikes their company so much.

*

“We'll need to prepare for company,” Arfil says over dinner a few nights later, the words falling into a conversation that's less a real conversation and more Constance trying to convince the girls not to invent errands in town in hopes of seeing Idilus's students, since visiting the school only gets them the dedicated students not willing to flirt with locals and gets Idilus setting them to work on top of it.

Trilli, sensing blood in the water, immediately abandons her argument that she really does want new hair ribbons to turn to him. “Company? What company? Are we inviting the residents of the Hold over? Does Idilus want us to host his students? Please say Idilus wants us to host his students.”

“Kalon Bel has written that he'd like to speak to me, and to get to know all of you,” says Arfil, and that effectively silences the rest of them.

It's Valira who manages to scrape her thoughts together first. “The Honorable Kalon Bel, whose family owns this house? He wrote from the _Underdark_? The postage must have been half a year's rent.”

“I'm sure I don't know any other Kalon Bels,” says Arfil, though his smile doesn't disguise how troubled he looks. “Though the postage wasn't so bad as that—it seems that he's moved to the surface, and settled not far away, in Noreneshire. He writes that he wants to visit, and get to know us.”

Valira looks at Constance, whose eyes are wide, and at Quil, her hands twisted together in her lap, and tries not to feel as frightened as they look. As far as she knows, Bel has always been an absent landlord, as his father was before him, a wealthy Underdark family with property above simply for the profit of it. Arfil rented it when he was just a wealthy young wizard, before he played host to a god and became a hero, and hasn't been interfered with, with a contract in writing that the house is his as long as he lives.

But maybe Bel, an elf, has realized that Arfil's life, no matter how strange and elongated, won't be as long as his, and there's no agreement with Constance, or with any of them after her. “Get to know us?” Constance asks, her voice a little unsteady. “Why should he want that?”

“Well, reading between the lines of his letter, he has few society connections above ground other than the baronet who holds the land the entrance to the Underdark is in, a Sir Solomon Fyham, and wants to make more, me being a very good one. And he likely wants to size up the house.” Arfil frowns a little, thoughtful. “He mentions duty several times, but I don't know what he means by that, unless he thinks I've let the house fall into disrepair.”

“When will he be here?”

“Any day, considering how slow the post has been with the rain lately,” says Arfil, as though he's not about to throw the household into disarray, and Constance lets out a small despairing noise. “It will all be fine, my dears. He'll stay a few weeks, see his house is still in good shape, perhaps make an agreement with Constance or one of you for what will come of the house once I'm gone, and we'll have a new and interesting friend.”

Valira wants to believe him, but even he seems uncertain, and Constance looks worried in the same way Valira feels, the keen worry of someone who's been without a home and sure they'd never find another one. Even the girls, both of them too young to remember much about the hard times, are subdued for the first time since Quil's return.

“I'm sure we will,” says Quil, always brave, always ready to make the best of something, and Valira says something she hopes sounds like agreement and lets Constance move the discussion to how best to accommodate Bel when he arrives.

*

Kalon Bel, when he shows up on their doorstep, is fairly young for what Valira imagines landlords must look like, though it makes sense—Arfil explained eventually that the property was bought as an investment upon his birth and transferred to his ownership when he came of age. He gives Arfil a cordial shake of the hand, bows over Constance's, and gives the four of them a general bow, lingering on Quil a little, as many men do.

“I hope I haven't discommoded your household too much,” he says, as though any of them could say that he has and that he'd be a fool if he thought he hadn't.

“Not at all,” says Constance, who has more manners than the rest of them together, and shows him in with brisk efficiency that he seems to appreciate.

Valira, uncharitably, had thought that he'd start acting like the house and household were his right away, but he doesn't seem inclined to. He's happy to talk about his journey, his life in Noreneshire, and, at great length and enthusiasm, his patron Solomon Fyham, who might well be a saint from the way Mr. Bel talks about him, and who seems to have strong feelings on the subject of duty.

“What's the neighborhood here like?” he asks into an awkward silence over dinner, when he'd asked who'd cooked the dinner and seemed surprised that between Arfil's magic and his income, they have a very competent staff. Valira has no idea what life is like in the Underdark, but however it is, he's clearly not used to being away yet.

“Quiet most times, but very busy now,” says Arfil.

That, of course, makes the girls perk up, after they've been trying very hard to be serious for the length of the meal, knowing that seeing as he's elvish, Mr. Bel is probably going to think they're far too young to be out. “There's a very prestigious school for magic in the town,” says Trilli, “run by the famed mage Idilus, whose work with rift crystals is known all over the world, and he's got a dozen mastery students staying with him, so we're very busy indeed.”

“And the greatest home in the area has recently become occupied again,” says Cordelia, and leans forward confidingly. “And we think the owners may well make an offer for Quil.”

“Cordelia,” Quil exclaims, clearly mortified, and Constance jumps in before Valira can, smoothing over the ruffled feathers and glossing quickly over the party at Fairpoint Hold to talk more about the mages, and about the Zanarams and the other families they dine with.

Mr. Bel doesn't show much on his face, so Valira has no idea what he thinks of her family's manners, but he doesn't seem terribly upset, either. Still, after Cordelia mentions that Quil may well soon be unavailable, Valira catches him looking at her a few times over the last course and in the parlor after, while Trilli entertains them all on flute and piano both, he sits next to her. He doesn't say anything, and Valira has no idea what to say to him, and the evening passes mostly in awkward silence.

*

Arfil, as though he's been waiting for the excuse, shuts himself away in his study, muttering something about a new theory to test, and they all know that when he's working in the house, there's little peace. Constance goes to call on Mrs. Zanaram, and Mr. Bel seems torn about going along before asking Valira to show him to Idilus's school, since they'd spoken of it so much last night. That, of course, gets Trilli and Cordelia insisting that they'll come along, and Quil laughs at Valira's expression and says she'll come as well, so the whole party of them take advantage of the lovely weather and walk down to town and across it to the school.

When they get there, the apprentice class are rowdy and making some terrible mess practicing transmutation magic in the largest classroom, wrangled by several of the journeymen, and Idilus tells them, looking harried, that most of the mastery students are taking advantage of the weather, and they're free to walk the grounds and greet them.

Valira can only imagine what kind of chaos Cordelia and Trilli will cause given that kind of freedom, and what kind of rebellion they'll form if Valira and Quil turn them around. Mr. Bel professes himself curious about the grounds, cared for and changed by years of students with varying levels of interest in the natural world, and when he hears there's an area rejuvenated and flourishing thanks to Valira's care and magic, he insists they should walk that way.

That area is usually one of the less-populated on the school grounds, which is why Valira is so fond of it, so she's happy enough to take them in that direction, and to listen to Mr. Bel talk about the grounds of Solomon Fyham's estate while they go.

It means she's unprepared, though, and surprised besides, when Cordelia perks up and starts waving at an approaching figure coming out of Valira's little garden patch. “Mr. Loz! Do come meet the rest of my sisters,” she says, and the man does as he's bid.

He's handsome enough, with a smile for Cordelia and Trilli that's friendly but not flirtatious, and with something odd about his eyes that Valira can't quite put her finger on. “Miss Cordelia, Miss Trillium, it's a pleasure to see you both again. Please do present us.”

Trilli beams at him, turns to them, and seems to realize belatedly that Kalon Bel ought to get precedence, which takes a little bit of the wind out of her sails. “Mr. Kalon Bel, our guardian's landlord, and Miss Myale and Miss Linnaeus,” she says after a moment. “This is Mr. Loz, and he's one of the mastery students here, and he's doing evocation work.”

That's strange. Idilus doesn't specialize in evocation, and Arfil does, so the last time the mastery students were in town, a serious young woman spent a great deal of time in Arfil's study, getting her help from him more than from Idilus. That Mr. Loz hasn't asked for the same arrangement, or Idilus offered it, is a surprise. They've been busy, though, with a houseguest and with Quil's illness, so there's plenty of time for that. “It's a pleasure,” she says, over Quil's polite murmur.

Trilli isn't done. “The garden you just came out of is my cousin's work, Mr. Loz. Isn't it beautiful?”

Mr. Loz looks at Valira, his eyebrows politely raised. “Your work? The planting or the magic?”

“Both,” Valira admits, and Mr. Bel makes a polite noise, she knows that, but Mr. Loz is still holding her eyes. “Idilus isn't a druid, but he helps me as he can, and I look at things on the grounds when I have the time free.”

“I have been admiring the work in there very much, Miss Linnaeus. You should be very proud.” Mr. Loz looks around at the five of them. “Won't you walk me around the grounds, and show me the rest of your work? I feel that I've barely been outside since I arrived, with all the work I've been doing.”

Trilli and Cordelia look at her in concert, hopeful and smiling, and much as Valira is reluctant to encourage them in their nonsense about Idilus's students, and doesn't know how she feels about Mr. Loz, with his toothy smile and his eyes, such a pale brown they're nearly orange and rarely blinking. “I suppose we can do that—Mr. Bel, if you don't mind, that is?”

“I'd be honored to see your work, Miss Linnaeus, and the scenery aboveground is still delightful to me, so we'll walk around the grounds as long as you please.”

Valira would be willing to bet that Kalon Bel has never found anything delightful in his life, but if he's willing, and the girls are excited, and Quil is still feeling strong, there's no reason not to, so she offers her friendliest smile. “Then I'll tour you around my work on the grounds, until you admit you're bored by me talking about grafting.”

Both of the gentlemen make polite noises, and Valira sighs and starts walking, leading them first back into her secluded area of the garden and then, when neither Bel nor Loz will admit they're bored, further out into the wilder parts of the grounds where she's made her studies in the way she prefers, helping what's already there rather than sculpting something new.

She's about to turn them around when they spot horses in the distance, riding closer. Valira's vision has always been sharp, and she recognizes the two riders first, and thinks about turning them around and walking away no matter how impolite it is, but Quil is with her. She'll put up with Major Ewhoza to give Quil a moment with Phi, who seems to have recognized them judging from the way her horse picks up speed only a few seconds later.

“Some of the neighbors at Fairpoint Hold,” she says to the gentlemen, as an excuse for why they're lingering, and watches Quil duck her head so her bonnet hides her reaction. Mr. Bel gives them both an assessing look, but hardly has time to do more before Phi rides up, Major Ewhoza only a few lengths behind her.

“I hadn't thought we would see you when we decided to go for a ride,” Phi says, with a smile that includes all of them but focuses on Quil, who looks up just in time to catch the edge of it and then looks down again. “Terry will be sorry he decided to stay home. Good day, all of you—though I'm afraid I haven't met the gentlemen.”

“Mr. Kalon Bel, our landlord, and Mr. Loz, a mastery student here,” says Quil.

Cordelia and Trilli immediately start up talking, asking Phi where they've been riding, and if plans are in train for the promised ball, and Quil is trying to hold them back, so it's Valira who notices the way Ewhoza's focus suddenly sharpens, how his head jerks so he's no longer staring sullen and silent between his horse's ears but looking directly at Mr. Loz. For a second, his eyes are wide in what looks like fear, and then they narrow again, and it's his usual haughty look only with a hundred times more loathing in it. When Valira looks at Mr. Loz, he's looking back, his stare intense, but with a little smile touching his mouth.

“She's getting restless,” Ewhoza says abruptly to Phi, cutting across Trilli's rapturous wonderings about whether she should buy a new dress for the ball or at least if she can have some new ribbons, heels touching his mare's sides. She's alert, aware her rider is unhappy, but not unhappy standing still, but Valira won't say that. “If you'll excuse me, I'll ride ahead, and you can catch me up.”

“No, no,” says Phi, though there's a puzzled notch between her brows. “We'll both go. I promise, ladies, as soon as there's a date for the ball, we'll invite you personally—and you as well, Mr. Bel, if you're still here, and all the mastery students as well. A pleasure, all of you. Come on, Haoti, let's keep exercising the horses.”

A few more pleasantries, and they're off. Quil seems a little deflated at how quick an interaction it was, though if she'd been able to raise her eyes above the withers of Phi's horse she would have had a lot of cause for hope, but Valira is mostly interested in what history Mr. Loz and Major Ewhoza could possibly have, and when they turn back, finds herself watching him more than she otherwise might.

He's done little to impress her, but if he dislikes Ewhoza as much as she does, she'll certainly be listening for why.

*

Mr. Loz claims to have an errand to run in town, and excuses himself to Idilus as they pass through the house again, falling in with their party as they go through town and back towards home.

They're just at the edge of the area he could reasonably expect to follow them to when Frog catches up to them. “I heard you'd been through town earlier,” he says, addressing them all easily once he's been introduced, though there's a cant to his eyebrows when he looks at Valira that means _You've been hoarding all the eligible men and I won't forget it_ if she's any judge. “Or rather, my mother did, and sent me to extend an invitation to you. She's hoping to have a card party, to give the mastery students a chance to get to know local society, and wanted to invite your family.” He gives Mr. Bel a little bow. “And while she didn't know that you're here, Mr. Bel, I'm sure she would be more than willing to have you.”

“If you're certain. I wouldn't like to be an inconvenience.”

Frog snorts, and Mr. Bel looks at him wide-eyed, apparently completely unable to respond to someone not taking him seriously. “If you knew the size this party is likely to be, you wouldn't mind at all. Don't worry, you'll hardly be noticed, and you'll get to meet local society too.”

“Then I'll be honored,” says Mr. Bel, still so serious, with a little bow.

“And I'll forward the invitation to my fellow students after I've finished my errands,” says Mr. Loz, and gives them all a general bow. “It was a pleasure to meet all of you, and I thank your mother in particular for her kind invitation, Mr. Zanaram.”

He leaves them, and after a few more raised eyebrows at Valira and assurances to Cordelia and Trilli that his mother did mean to invite them as well, Frog does as well, and the rest of them head back home to warn Constance and Arfil what's in the wind. Arfil, of course, immediately comes up with an excuse not to go, but Constance smiles over Trilli and Cordelia's enthusiasms and says that they may go as long as they behave themselves.

Valira wonders if the party for Fairpoint Hold will be invited, and if Major Ewhoza will come, after his strong reaction to Mr. Loz, but she can't think of a way to ask even Quil about it that sounds reasonable, so she ruminates on it herself but doesn't mention it over the few days before they're expected at the Zanaram household, which pass very quickly.

As it turns out, when they arrive, there was no reason for her curiosity, because Mrs. Zanaram tells them, as she bustles them in and to the tables she set up, that the Windroses and their guests had to decline her invitation. She singles Quil out in her regrets, which makes her color up, and then consults with Constance on urgent maternal business while they all find seats, most of the mastery students already present, no doubt tempted in by Mrs. Zanaram's notoriously excellent and generous cook.

Miss Keene is there, sitting with one of the mastery students, a young woman Valira thinks is doing transmutation work, and waves Quil over to join her set, so Valira finds her own way to a seat not far down the table from Frog, next to Mr. Loz, with Cordelia settling in on his other side, almost bouncing with her excitement about being out in society with the new people.

They play a few hands before Mr. Loz speaks to her, quiet enough that it doesn't carry to Cordelia, who is very serious about her wagers and seems to be ignoring them anyway. “I very much enjoyed our walk the other day. And seeing your work. You really should be a mastery student as well, from what you've been doing. I was shocked to find out that you aren't a full-time student. Such power, going to waste.”

Valira shrugs, and doesn't talk about taking care of her cousin, and how cooped up she feels studying tomes of magic in a way that her power doesn't like to work. “I don't think it's going to waste.”

“Of course not. It's going to use in those beautiful gardens, after all.”

She doesn't have to look at him to know he's giving her his most charming smile, and she considers her cards for a moment as she thinks of what to say. “It was a nice walk. Though I do feel awkward about part of it.”

“Ah, yes. You must have noticed that Major Ewhoza knew me—or you called him major, anyway, in your introductions. When I last saw him he hadn't risen so high.” An elegant shrug. “I suppose his family connections ...”

“You know him, then. What's your opinion of him?”

“I do, but surely that makes my opinion less fair, no more.”

“You could tell me how you know him, then. All I know is that he's a landowner in another part of the countryside, and a guest of the Windroses of Fairpoint.”

“Well.” There's a pause while they bid and engage in the conversation, but Valira is waiting for him to speak again the whole time, the rest of the room fading into unimportance. “I once thought that I knew him very well, but I can't have, considering—well. We were as brothers for many years, because his father looked out for my interests, knew my magical talents and interests. He always told me that I would get my training as a cleric, and be given the living at the temple of all gods at Belvale when I had it, but after his death … he was a good man, but his son didn't abide by his promises. I was lucky to win a place training my magic in a different way.”

His voice is low enough that no one else reacts, and Valira has to be careful to protect his privacy, not to respond the way she wants to, with shock, and then with anger, loudly. She already knows Ewhoza is haughty and cold, but to think this of him is another step worse. “But that's horrible,” she says when she trusts her voice. “Surely you could have asked for some redress from him, if he was going against his father's known wishes.”

“It was never in the will, he being a young man still when he died, and I didn't wish to drag the family's name through the mud when he'd been so kind to me. And when guardianship of his young cousin had just fallen to him, too. The neighborhood still had to receive her, of course.”

Valira shakes her head. “I can hardly believe it of him—of anyone the Windroses would esteem so highly. They're kindness itself.” And if they aren't, she needs to warn Quil away from them right away.

“I'm certain they are—the lieutenant colonel certainly seemed so. Perhaps overly kind, or overly optimistic about his character.”

Valira thinks of Ewhoza's eyes on her, of him saying that he's not very forgiving, and wonders if he was jealous of a man who might have been another son to his father, and did something dishonorable because of it. “That is … someone ought to know about this. _They_ ought to, most likely.”

“I beg you not to tell them, Miss Linnaeus. Haoti and I can inhabit the same neighborhood politely, I hope. I won't go out of my way to avoid him, anyway. If he wishes to avoid me, that's his own business.”

Cordelia leans across to interrupt then, asking Mr. Loz for advice about her wagers, and then Frog captures Valira's attention with questions about her garden, and they don't return to the topic, but Valira finds herself quiet for the rest of the evening, thinking about it and chafing at the words, even as she listens to Trilli and Cordelia in the carriage home sighing over all the mastery students and their charming company.

She's home in her bedroom with Quil before she can talk about any of it, though, and when she finishes pouring it out, there's a long silence, long enough that Valira worries Quil has fallen asleep. “I can hardly think it of him,” she says at last, sounding troubled. “Phi and Terry and the others, they know he's not the most sociable of men, you and I found that out, but something like this? There must be a misunderstanding.”

“I don't know. He's said he doesn't forgive easily. If he thought he had some sort of grievance with Mr. Loz ...”

“We could ask him for an explanation.”

“We certainly can't. Mr. Loz asked me to leave it alone, but I don't know how I'm supposed to behave in society with him, knowing this.”

There's a silence. “Nor can I, though I do wish we could ask for an explanation. Or Phi and Terry. Surely they'd know, and be able to tell us. But Mr. Loz is so kind as well, and paying you such particular attention … I don't know. If you trust Mr. Loz, I must as well.”

“I think I do. What reason could he have to lie?”

Quil doesn't seem to have anything to say to that, and after a little while, Valira slips into an uneasy sleep, all of her dreams foggy, though she thinks when she wakes that she remembers hearing Mr. Loz's voice.

*

Terry arrives a few days later with a smile on his face, pink-cheeked from what must have been a brisk ride, and they show him into the parlor and are probably very obvious indeed about making sure Quil has the chair nearest his. “I can't stay long,” he says after he's already sitting, with a mug of warm tea in his hands, “but I wanted to personally invite you to that promised ball. We've all been planning just as much as we can, and will be ready to host you and what seems to be half the population of the local countryside four days hence, which we've been assured doesn't conflict with anything.”

“Of course we'll come,” says Arfil, since he's the one to properly be accepting invitations and was even coaxed out of his laboratory upon the arrival of their guest. “It's good to see the Hold at the center of local society again. You haven't had too much trouble setting it up, I hope?”

“No, not at all. Everyone has been sharing your opinion, actually, and thus making it very easy to get the event planned.” He turns to Mr. Bel, sitting awkwardly at the edge of the room, barely introduced. “And my wife wanted me particularly to let you know that you're welcome, since you're a fellow newcomer to the neighborhood, if only presently a visitor—we're inviting your fellow newcomers at Idilus's school as well.”

If Mr. Loz is insistent that he won't back away from socializing with Ewhoza, maybe she'll get to dance with him, though it's a little embarrassing that that's her first thought. Valira thanks him for the invitation in the general rush of thanks, Mr. Bel's going on just long enough to be awkward, and mostly sits back as he talks to Quil for the remainder of his mug of tea, exclusive enough that Arfil wanders away and Trilli and Cordelia wander off giggling well before he leaves.

Almost as soon as Terry is gone and Valira goes out into the garden to enjoy the sunshine, Mr. Bel follows her out, as he has a funny tendency to do, though he's shown little interest in the gardens. “He's very kind to invite me, but I am, as he says, a stranger to the neighborhood,” he says, which is new. Normally he doesn't talk very much when he trails her, and Valira appreciates that. “I hope you'll be kind enough to reserve a few dances for me, to keep things from being too awkward. The first two, perhaps? I promise that I've studied the dances of the surface carefully. Sir Solomon wouldn't allow anything less.”

Kalon Bel isn't the person Valira would prefer to be reserving her dances for, but she can't very well say that she's already engaged, so she smiles at him instead. “Of course. And I hope you know that the rest of my sisters would be happy to dance with you as well, if you're worried about partners. And Mr. Frog Zanaram, or anyone else you met at the card party the other night.”

“You are all very kind. I simply thought it would be best to ask you first of all,” he says, gives her a bow, and walks away, leaving her very confused indeed, and wishing that somehow Mr. Loz had been there to reserve her dances before Mr. Bel could.

There will be later dances, at least. Valira isn't so popular a dance partner in town that she'll be unable to promise more even if she doesn't see Mr. Loz until halfway through the ball itself. She turns her mind away from the subject, and gives herself over to the enthusiasms of the younger girls and Quil's anxiety about what she ought to do with her hair for the days leading up to the ball.

*

Fairpoint Hold, when they arrive on the night of the ball, is decorated beautifully for a party, lanterns everywhere showing the guests the way in, and all the hallways even cleaner and clearer than they were when Valira was last there, until they reach the ballroom, which was still in dustcloths when she toured the house during Quil's illness and which wouldn't be out of place in any Hylene townhouse, from what Valira has heard of those.

Phi and Terry are waiting at the door to see them in, each of them quick to ask Quil to save a dance for them and then more generally hoping to find the rest of them free for dances, which makes Valira smile and elbow Quil as they move out of the receiving line and into the ballroom. It's full of the whole neighborhood, from what she can tell—the whole family of Zanarams, Miss Keene and her father, everyone else who regularly attends their assemblies, and Idilus and all his most advanced students, as well as his extra mastery students. Lanra, Iain, and Kal are in the center of everything, seeing to the comfort of the guests, and Ewhoza has found a corner to stand in, and seems to be ignoring everyone, which Valira would prefer to an acknowledgment, in the end.

Her family scatters, and Valira looks around again and decides to follow Trilli in the direction of the mastery students, where she smiles at Idilus and kisses him on the cheek when she gets close enough to him. “You look well.”

“As do you. My younger students hope you'll come for another lesson about nature magic soon, if you can make the time for us.” He grins at her, shameless as Arfil is with teasing her. “And some of my older students wonder too.”

“Of course I'll be glad to, almost any day you care to name, though I don't know how much of a teacher I am.”

“You're too modest.”

“Have all your mastery students come tonight?”

His smile is far too knowing, but Valira doesn't mind being obvious too much, at least. “All but one. Mr. Loz was called away on business for a few days, a summons from an old teacher, it seems. He'll be back soon, and was, I think, sorry to miss the party.”

Valira tries not to look at Ewhoza. Mr. Loz must have decided it was wiser to avoid him after all, and keep local society from awkwardness, and she respects him for withdrawing even as she regrets his absence. “We shall just have to see him upon his return, then,” she says, and lingers a little longer to talk about what she should teach his students before excusing herself to find Frog.

“Don't think I didn't notice you looking around for Mr. Loz,” he says when she finds him. “You're very popular these days, aren't you? He's obviously interested, Mr. Bel is staying with you, and you're close with the Fairpoint group too, thanks to Quil. I admit I'm jealous.”

“You shouldn't be. And none of that is anything, really, though I'm disappointed that Mr. Loz couldn't come.” She lowers her voice. “I think it may have something to do with Major Ewhoza. From what he told me at your party, there's some very awkward family history there.”

Frog raises his eyebrows. “More's the pity, and you'll have to catch me up on that gossip later. For now, I think one of your swains is coming to fetch you for the first dance.”

“I will, I promise,” says Valira, and turns to find Mr. Bel bearing down on them, too close to contest the word “swain” politely. “Mr. Bel, shall we take the floor? Mr. Zanaram, I'll save you one later, shall I?”

“Oh, certainly,” says Frog, with a quirk of a smile.

Mr. Bel, to his credit, gives him a stiff little bow. “I'm engaged for the first two sets, Mr. Zanaram, but perhaps I could engage your company for the third? I know you're a dear friend of Miss Linnaeus's, and must be worth knowing.”

That startles Frog out of his smugness, but after a moment he nods and smiles. “I will look forward to it, then,” he says, and Mr. Bel bows again and pulls Valira to join the growing set.

As it turns out, whatever practice Sir Solomon Fyham set him to doing has given Mr. Bel more than enough skill for the neighborhood, where the party from Fairpoint Hold are by far the most accomplished dancers. When prompted, he talks about his lessons, and about Sir Solomon, and about the beauty of Fairpoint Hold and the neighborhood in general, and how pleased he is that his father chose this neighborhood for investing in property. When she gives the names of the party from the Hold, he perks up, recognizing Major Ewhoza's name and saying he believes that the Ewhozas and the Fyhams are connected, but doesn't ask her opinion on Ewhoza, so she isn't forced into saying anything polite about him.

When the second set ends and the musicians stand up for a moment to stretch (and are inevitably waylaid by Trilli, who seems to have a number of questions for them), Mr. Bel bows to Valira, claps to the musicians, and returns her obligingly to Frog, who's just been dancing with Lanra, who grins at Valira and promises to dance with her later in the evening, having already promised himself to Miss Keene for the next one.

“I'll fetch you both punch,” Mr. Bel says, since the break for the musicians is likely to last a quarter hour, and longer if Trilli has anything to say about it, and goes to dispatch his chivalrous task with his usual solemn expression.

It's hardly five seconds later that Major Ewhoza passes them, and gives them a bow. When they've both greeted them, he turns to Valira. “Miss Linnaeus, would you do me the honor of the next dance if you have it free?”

She does, since she can hardly turn to Frog and ask for rescue, especially when he's due his dance with Mr. Bel, and hadn't pledged any other dances in advance while she was hoping for Mr. Loz's attention. With that in mind, all she can do is force a smile onto her face, and she suspects it's not a very convincing one. “It would be my pleasure, of course, major.”

Another bow. “Then I'll return to join the set with you in just a moment. I was going to take a breath of fresh air before the next dance begins, since it seems we have the time, thanks to Miss Trillium. You're welcome to join me, either of you, if you care to.”

“We're awaiting Mr. Bel with our punch,” Valira can say with total honesty and relief, and then grudgingly adds, “but you're kind to offer.”

“Enjoy your punch, and I will see you in just a moment,” he says, and leaves her to wait a few polite seconds before she turns to Frog, utterly baffled.

Frog is already rolling his eyes at her, and pitches his voice low to speak. “You need to learn how to hide your expressions.”

“Why on earth is he asking me to dance? He dislikes me, and when I have a chance to tell you what I've heard, you'll understand my having trouble with politeness.”

“Doesn't matter what you've heard, though I do like keeping up with the gossip and I'll look forward to hearing it. He's still important and friends with our hosts, and you could stand to remember that.” Valira frowns at him, and he frowns right back. “It does you no good to insult someone who's friends with the people your sister is interested in, if nothing else.”

Valira still wants to complain about his lack of sympathy, but it's a good enough point, and he sounds annoyed enough, that she stops complaining just in time to drink a glass of very nice punch before bidding goodbye to Frog and Mr. Bel and to offer her hand to Ewhoza with the nicest smile she can manage when he returns.

The first time through the dance is totally silent, Ewhoza with an absent frown on his face and Valira not quite sure what to begin with, but when the second time through seems just as silent and their neighbors, two of the mastery students, seem bemused by the quiet, she makes an attempt, if a banal one. “They've decorated beautifully for the dance.”

“They have.”

Most of the pattern passes in silence, and Valira sighs in exasperation and says what she would to Trilli, because it's better than second-guessing everything else she might say. “It's your turn now.”

That makes him frown at her, less in hauteur and more in complete confusion. “My turn?”

“To introduce a topic of conversation. The decoration clearly doesn't interest you. Maybe the music does? Or the company?”

He raises an eyebrow, a shade of the teasing he trades with Phi and Lanra and no one else, as far as she's observed. “You follow rules of conversation so closely?”

“Only when it's necessary to resort to the rules because my partner is silent.”

“My apologies. I suppose I thought that you wouldn't wish to speak much.”

_Then why did you ask me to dance?_ Valira wants to say and doesn't. “We are dancing, major, and we may as well make the best of it,” she tries instead, with a smile so he doesn't think she's insulting him even if she'd like to. “Though I don't think either of us are easy conversationalists.”

“Are you not? You seem popular enough.”

Valira raises her eyebrows, because she can't imagine where he got that impression. Most times, if she has dance partners, it's because she's Quil's sister, and if she has conversational partners, it's because Frog is as bad at the games of courtship and romance as she is. “Certainly not. Maybe we're alike—neither of us likes to chance saying anything unless we're sure it's going to be received well.”

His gaze is far too sharp for her liking, and there's something confused in the twist of his mouth, like he's trying to work something out. “That's not you,” he says, and he sounds so sure she almost missteps at the strength of it. “It makes you sound sycophantic, and you aren't that by any measure. And it makes me sound—I don't know. Perhaps you're right. It's hard to assess my own character, so I may as well bow to your judgment.”

That extraordinary statement leaves Valira quiet for long enough that they get a curious glance from their neighbors again. As long as there's a hum of conversation, no one will be suspicious, or care what the conversation is unless they're dreadful eavesdroppers, but the silence draws attention. “I've heard you assess your own character before, remember? I wouldn't think you would have any trouble agreeing with me.”

“But I'd had time to think about those statements. In this aspect, I'll trust you. And perhaps you'll trust that I can see things you can't—your popularity, for instance. I've spoken a little with Mage Idilus, since he gave us permission to ride across his grounds, and he says that his students look forward to lessons with you, and that everyone finds the parts of the garden and grounds with your touch the most restful to be in. And certainly you always seem to have company, when I see you.”

Valira must be staring, but she can hardly avoid it, at the evidence that he's been watching her so closely. She thinks of Frog, thinks about asking why he asked, and why he's been looking closely, because when he's not being standoffish she could almost see liking him, but then she thinks of Mr. Loz, absent to spare awkwardness from a man who robbed him of a livelihood for no discernible reason. “Yes. You seemed to know some of my company when we met the other day. Mr. Loz is an excellent addition to local society.”

“I'm sure he is,” says Ewhoza, and there's frost in his tone again, and he looks away from her. “You seemed quite friendly.”

“And why shouldn't I be, to someone who's been nothing but kind and polite to me?”

There's a moment of silence, as he bites his lip and looks distantly over her shoulder. “Take care,” is all he says when he breaks silence, just in time for them to find the end of the set, where they'll rest for a time through it before starting again.

Before Valira can begin to find something to say, Mrs. Zanaram almost runs into them bustling by on the edge of the dance floor, and stops to give Valira a delighted beam. “My dear, you must be so pleased about Miss Myale's prospects.” Her nod, sure enough, tilts at Quil, dancing with Phi, her head ducked as Phi smiles at her, all sweetness and happiness. Terry, just next to them dancing with Iain, seems to be joining their conversation intermittently, whenever he has the breath, smiling with just as much happiness. “Can we expect an announcement soon?”

“I really don't like to speculate,” says Valira, and tries her hardest not to look at Ewhoza. That leaves her looking at Quil, though, and Quil is still determinedly dancing and speaking without looking at either of her partners, though the combination of the dancing and their attention has her color very high indeed.

“Of course, of course, my dear. Well, the dancing is beautiful, and I see you two are nearly due to start again, so I'll be on my way,” says Mrs. Zanaram, and does just that.

Ewhoza doesn't speak much after that, something clearly on his mind, whether that's Mr. Loz or his unhappiness at Phi and Terry lowering themselves for someone like Quil. Valira thinks about trying again, but she tried once already, and as it is, she doesn't want to like him, and doesn't plan to do so if she can help it.

At the end of the dance, he gives her a stiff bow, and she's sure her curtsy is just as stiff, and is relieved to find Lanra at her elbow as soon as Ewhoza walks away. “I've hardly seen you all night,” he says. “Happen to be free for a dance?”

“Yes, and happily,” says Valira, and gets back in the set, tracking Ewhoza to where he asks one of Frog's sisters to dance with all the enthusiasm he'd give to picking out a cut of beef from the butcher. “It's a lovely party, Phi and Terry ought to be proud.”

“They're clearly having a good night.” When she sneaks a peak over his shoulder as they turn to the start of the music, Quil has switched to dancing with Terry, and Phi has asked Miss Keene, and Quil still looks entirely overwhelmed. “And I hope you are as well.”

“For the most part.”

“Ah, yes.” Lanra's smile goes a little rueful. “I know he's difficult, but he's really not so bad when you get to know him.”

Valira raises her eyebrows athim. “Are you supposed to say that about your sister's friend?”

“Maybe not, but you seem to need to hear it. Has he put his foot in his mouth again? Whatever he said, I'm pretty sure he didn't mean it the way it sounded.”

“His response when I mentioned an old acquaintance of his was a little cold,” she admits. Perhaps Lanra knows something that can balance the scales a little, and Frog's mild rebuke is proof that she should be trying to do that at least a little bit. “A Mr. Loz who's studying with Idilus.”

Lanra's face pulls into a frown. “I can't say I know much about that, or really anything that I can say without breaking a confidence, but I think it's safe to say that every story has two sides, and not everything Loz says can be trusted. Be careful with yourself, won't you?”

“I will,” she assures him, his concern making her far more wary than Ewhoza's stiffness ever could. “And I won't ask you to break a confidence, but—is there something Idilus ought to know? Mr. Loz is his student, after all.”

“I'll ask Phi, she'll know what to do,” Lanra decides, and then, with determination and cheer, changes the subject to Trilli, who apparently told him that she plans to join the band later in the evening. Valira shakes her head, exasperated, but laughs when Lanra does, and finally feels that she can relax at least a little bit.

When the dance is over, she ducks outside to breathe, glad for the chill in the autumn air, which just seems to have decided to settle in to stay over the past week. No one comes out to bother her, and she indulges herself in staying for the length of a dance before going back inside, where it seems a lot hotter and stuffier than it did before she went out. The first person to find her once she's through the door is Quil, much to her happiness. “I'm surprised you're not dancing this one,” she says with a smile.

Quil smiles back, though her color is still high. “Phi and Terry insisted on fetching me some punch,” she admits. “I've told them they're hosting this party and ought to do so, but they keep insisting on dancing with me and bringing me punch.”

“Well, maybe they just like you. Everyone is speculating, after all.”

“Are they? Oh, how mortifying. I hardly know them, and if—well, someday, maybe, but they've only been here a matter of weeks.”

“And you already stayed with them for over one of those weeks,” Valira points out. “And of course people are going to gossip about our illustrious new residents, and if they're paying attention to you, then you're part of it.”

“Hush. Shouldn't they gossip about you too? You've danced with Ewhoza and Lanra both.”

“I can't say my dance with Ewhoza went very well.”

“No.” She frowns. “I did ask Phi and Terry if they know Mr. Loz, but they don't know much, or wouldn't say much, and Phi didn't look happy, so I didn't press. I don't like to think ill of either of them.”

“That's because you are far too nice a person,” says Valira, and nods in Phi and Terry's direction as they bear down with the promised punch and envelop her in a warm conversation, with no mention of Ewhoza or Mr. Loz at all.

She dances with Terry, and then with Lanra again, and then finds herself next to Mr. Bel, who can't very well dance with her again, considering propriety, but who insists on her accompanying him while he explains his connection to Major Ewhoza. “I'm not sure he'll care for the connection much,” Valira warns.

“Nonsense, why wouldn't he? Sir Solomon is a leader of society, and the kindest patron I could have asked for on my arrival to the surface, and the least I can do is tell his kinsman so.” With that, he tows her across the room and catches Ewhoza, who seems to be on his way to get another breath of fresh air. “Major Ewhoza, when we met the other day I hadn't recalled the connection between us.”

Ewhoza frowns at him, looks at Valira for explanation, and when she just shrugs helplessly, frowns some more. “I'm not aware of a connection.”

“I believe you're related to Sir Solomon Fyham, who's my patron in all matters of the surface world.”

“Ah, of course.” There's a shadow of a smile on Ewhoza's face, but it doesn't seem to be a happy one. “Uncle Solomon did write that he'd taken a lodger in the dower house and that he was a good addition to local society.”

“He's kindness itself, to say anything like that about me! Though of course he's kindness itself in everything, as you must know.”

Ewhoza stares some more. “I'd say you would know better than I,” he finally says, and excuses himself, which is shockingly rude and a relief all at once.

Mr. Bel shakes his head. “An odd man, but still, I'm glad he knows of the connection now.”

Valira decides it's best to stay silent on that matter, and is relieved to run across Cordelia, on a break from dancing with every one of the mastery students she can get to ask her, and foist Mr. Bel off on her for the space of a dance.

After that, she's more than ready to go home, and people are starting, but with the hosts paying so much attention to Quil, even after they run out of dances either of them can properly dance with her, their party ends up lingering until the very end. Trilli does join the band, when they start flagging, and when they at last pack up and leave, Arfil lingers talking to Iain while Quil talks with the Windroses, and Trilli nearly falls asleep on Constance's shoulder while Valira makes excruciating conversation with Mr. Bel, Lanra, and Kal, Ewhoza having left for bed a good twenty minutes before.

All in all, she feels wrung out, annoyed at her own annoyance at being left without Mr. Loz as a dancing partner, and ready to avoid balls for the next six months. Still, when Quil leans her head against the carriage wall, sighs, and says “It was a beautiful night, wasn't it?” as they depart, only Phi and Terry left waving on the steps and one figure in an upstairs window, too much in shadow to identify, to see them away, Valira smiles at her and says, if only for her sake, “Yes.”

*

The day after the ball, none of them do much but sleep. Trilli attempts to write a new dance tune on the pianoforte sometime in the afternoon and is shouted down by the household, so she goes to her room to sulk and the rest of them sit with books and handwork and try very hard to stay quiet, even Mr. Bel, who sits at a desk and writes what must be an endless stream of letters for the whole day.

The next day dawns beautiful, and Valira fetches her paints almost as soon as breakfast is over, ready to go catch the current state of the wildflowers, only for Mr. Bel to catch her in the parlor on her way out. “Miss Linnaeus, I wonder if I might trouble you for a private interview.” And, when Valira just stares at him because he's spoken to her alone in the garden several times with no trouble about it, he coughs and turns to Constance and Arfil, who have been companionably reading the latest paper delivered from Hylene. “If, that is, your guardians feel that is appropriate.”

He might as well have dug a deep hole and pushed her in it, the way her stomach lurches at that, and she stares at him in what has to be horror. She's never been good at hiding her expressions. “I can't think you'd have anything to say to me that my family couldn't hear.”

“Nonetheless, I'd like to speak to you alone,” he says, and he can do what she can't, and hide what he's thinking, giving her that same blank expression he's done since his arrival that could mean anything at all.

She looks to Constance for rescue, but she's smiling, a little teary-eyed, as though this could be something Valira wants, and nods encouragingly. “You could hear what he has to say, at least, darling. It's a lovely morning to go out into the garden, I think. I'll check on you in a few moments.”

Constance is gentle, and impossible to gainsay. No one in the household will go against her orders, no matter how much they're phrased as requests, so Valira puts down her paints and, with the feeling that maybe there is in fact a deep pit he's going to push her in, precedes Mr. Bel out into the garden. In the house, there are more than a few windows that look out on the bench where he sits and stares at her until she sits too, and she doesn't face them, but knows word will have already traveled around the house and that they'll be watching, waiting to see what transpires.

“You must know,” he says, so weighty and serious, “that I consider it my duty to see your family well looked after, you being my tenants of such long standing. But equally you should know that I intend to take possession of this house one day, when Arfil has passed on and our contract ends, and so my duty becomes less clear. But Sir Solomon has said that in such cases, a marriage alliance would be appropriate, so your family can remain where you are even when the head of it is gone, without difficulty or scandal.”

Valira wants very badly to laugh at him, and pretend it's a joke, and move past the embarrassment of it, but there's no way of interpreting him as anything but serious, just as there's no way as interpreting him as enthusiastic. “While I appreciate your sense of duty, that isn't what I want,” she says.

“Duty isn't about what we want. With Miss Myale likely to marry well, and your sisters too young to be properly relied on, you're their chance to stay in the home they've known, and I'm willing to give that to you.”

“You could work out a rental agreement with Mrs. Myale, or something, if you cared so much for us staying in our home.” Valira shakes her head. “But that's not the point. If you don't want to marry me, and I don't want to marry you, duty can't matter in that. We'll find a way.”

“Think about it, Miss Linnaeus. It's the most sensible solution.”

The worst part is that he might not be wrong. They wouldn't have to rely on a marriage that may be expected but isn't sure by any margin for the hope of their future. Constance would get to stay in the home she's lived in since her children were young, and Cordelia and Trilli would know they wouldn't have to marry to have a home, that they wouldn't be a burden. Maybe it's what's best, but it's repulsive too, because it would mean sharing a bed and a life with Kalon Bel, who might as well still be a stranger after a week sleeping in their house, who only talks about his patron, who hasn't said the word “love” once. Valira isn't a romantic, not really, but she's enough of one to hate the thought of what her life would be. “You're probably right, but I can't do it, and I'll thank you not to continue pressing after I've already turned you down.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“And you can't take me at my word! No, Mr. Bel. If you won't listen to my opinion on something as important as this, what could I expect in my household and family?” Valira stands up. “I would have welcomed your friendship, and even allowed a courtship, if you'd cared to try, but this makes all of that impossible.”

“I see.” He stands up as well. “This isn't an offer that will remain open, Miss Linnaeus. We'll see what your family says about this, but I mean to marry, and if you won't have me, I'll look elsewhere, and the consequences are your own to consider.”

“You're very kind,” she says, and for once, he seems to understand her sarcasm, from the way he frowns before she storms away.

She goes to her room, going past her whole family on the stairs, and shuts even Quil out, and is only given an hour before Constance gently knocks and then walks in when Valira can't bring herself to respond, given as she is to a very immature fit of the sulks on her bed. After a moment, Constance sighs and comes to sit next to her. “It wouldn't be such a terrible fate, would it? Even if you never came to love him, there would be children to care for—you wouldn't call my life a terrible fate, would you?”

They never talk about Mr. Myale, no matter what else they talk about, and Valira suspects there's a reason, but she can't very well tell Constance that the life she leads and enjoys sounds stifling, that she doesn't want comfort and happiness in her children alone. “I know I'm being selfish, but I can't do it.”

“Oh, darling, I'm not asking you to consider it for me, or even for the girls. I just don't want you to shut away an opportunity for happiness.”

“I couldn't be happy with him, not after the way he proposed to me. Even if I were to marry a man I don't love, and I don't know why I'd want to do that, I would at least want one that I could understand, and like. I don't think I can manage either with him. He's not for me, Constance, please.”

Constance runs a gentle hand through Valira's hair. “The first proposal any of my daughters receives, and it's a disaster, but I don't blame you. If you're certain, you're certain.”

She stays a few minutes longer, stroking Valira's hair, before she quietly excuses herself, and Valira only barely has time to think about coming back downstairs to try again to take her paints out before another knock comes on the door. This time, she calls for whoever it is to come in, and Trilli enters with a hopeful smile. Valira sighs and sits up and pats the bed next to her. “Don't you scold me,” she warns.

“I won't.” Trilli sits down and immediately frowns. “Only I don't understand. He's handsome enough, isn't he? There are worse fates.”

“When you're old enough—” Trilli makes a face. “No, I stand by it. A few years from now, when you seriously start thinking about setting up housekeeping, or finding alternatives, you'll understand that looks help, but when there's an incompatibility, all the good looks in the world don't matter.”

“Mr. Loz's good looks seem to have won your good opinion.”

“He may be handsome, yes, but he seems to have had a difficult life, and he respects my work.” She puts an arm around Trilli's shoulders. “You know we'll be fine, don't you? Whether or not Quil marries the Windroses, we'll make it through. All of us.”

“I know,” Trilli says, her voice very small. “But this way, we could have stayed.”

Trilli was so young when they left home, so young that she doesn't call it home the way Valira does, just “back there” in a tone of disdain. This home, the one Arfil gave them, is the one she knows and loves, and Valira has just taken it from her. “You always say you're going to leave,” she tries.

“I am. I'm going to become a famous bard, and women will swoon at my feet, and I'll drag Cordelia off on my adventures with me, but I always thought—I always thought I'd be able to come back home here.”

“You will for a long time, still. Arfil is old, but not that old, and as long as he lives this house is ours. After that … we're just going to have to rely on the charity of whoever Quil marries. I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault you don't love him,” says Trilli, though she sounds dubious, and then she perks up. “Does this mean you're awaiting a proposal from Mr. Loz, then?”

“I know Mr. Loz even less than I know Mr. Bel,” she says firmly. “We will have to see if my good opinion of him holds up.”

“It should,” Trilli says, settling more comfortably on the bed. “Cordelia says he's the most handsome of the mastery students. Even if good looks don't matter, maybe they matter a _little_.”

Valira laughs and sends her away to practice her music, pointing out she needs to work if she's going to be a famous bard, and only takes a few minutes more to collect herself before she comes downstairs. Quil greets her as soon as she's down, giving her hand a quick clasp, and then she's confronted with Arfil, who looks at her with his eyebrows raised. “Don't you start,” she says, not least because they're very near the parlor door and it's open and Mr. Bel must be in there writing his letters again, since he seems to do little else even if he never franks or sends them.

“And what do you think I'm going to say?”

“You'll try to convince me, probably,” she says.

“I'll do no such thing,” he replies, and grins at her shock. “Certainly it would be convenient for you girls not to have to pack up your gowns and books when I'm gone, but if you think I haven't left all five of you well provided for and able to set up a fine establishment of your own, you don't know me well at all.”

“You're not angry, then?” Valira asks, because Arfil is so rarely angry at them, or disappointed in them, but the thought is still terrible. He's the one who gave her a home, and she can't bear to make him unhappy.

Arfil just shakes his head, eyes twinkling. “Why should I be? No, send anyone who complains about the matter to me, you shouldn't be bothered with it further.”

Quil, still standing next to her, beams with the relief Valira is still too shocked to show, and Valira throws her arms around Arfil's neck just in time for a knock on the door that Quil goes to answer, being closer than any of the maids.

“Mr. Zanaram, we weren't expecting you,” says Quil, a little louder than normal, and Valira pulls herself together enough to turn and greet Frog as he walks in.

Her eyes must be shining, because he raises his eyebrows at the sight of her. “And what's happening in here?”

“I just …” Valira looks at the parlor door and walks away from it, switching places with Quil and lowering her voice. “Mr. Bel asked me to marry him and I declined, and the house has been in an uproar. I'm so glad to see a friend, though, since it all seems to have passed.”

Frog sighs at her. “You're a fool, you know. You could have had a household and security, and you turn it down for what?”

Valira frowns, stung. “Incompatibility. Isn't that a good enough reason?”

“Not always,” he says, and she thinks of all his siblings, the way he's always wanted to get out of his family's house, and still can't imagine saying yes, even if she did want to get away from her sisters rather than keeping them close. “Oh, stop it,” he adds, irritable, at whatever he sees in her face. “Aren't you going to ask me in?”

“Do come in, tell me why you stopped by—I didn't see you yesterday, so you must be here to talk about the ball.”

He smiles at her, fond and exasperated, and admits that's the case, and she steels herself to lead him into the parlor. Sure enough, Mr. Bel is there, writing by the window, and stands to bow to Frog with impeccable good manners. Frog rolls his eyes and says something barely polite back and then, with his usual good instincts, doesn't ask about Valira's dance with Major Ewhoza or anything else difficult, just talks about the little dramas he's heard about that she missed in the evening. With one eye on Mr. Bel, he manages to somewhat deftly insert explanations of why his various stories are interesting, and who the people involved are, and by the end, Mr. Bel has put away his papers to listen, though he still doesn't have anything to say.

When the afternoon has gotten away from them and the whole family save Arfil is gathered and has talked the ball to death, Frog excuses himself, and Valira walks him to the door. “Really, such an idiot,” he says to her, more fond than exasperated this time, and kisses her cheek before he leaves.

After dinner that night, Valira goes outside to enjoy the evening chill, and wishes she were surprised when Mr. Bel follows her only a few minutes later. “Please don't,” she says. “My answer hasn't changed.”

“I'm not here to ask again,” he says. “I'm here to … it seems I still have plenty to learn about the surface, and I did poorly, asking you the way I did. Please know that I still think highly of you, and that even if I do intend to live here one day, I won't evict your family with nowhere to stay, which I realize you must have thought when I asked that way. It would have been the easiest way to do things, but if it's not your choice, I will understand that. I'll only be here another week or so, and in the meantime I hope that we can be cordial.”

And, after that shocking pronouncement, he bows and leaves her be, and instead of watching the stars or the frost forming, as she usually likes to do, Valira spends all her precious time before she starts shivering trying to make sense out of her day.

*

Cordelia and Trilli want to walk to town the next morning, so Valira offers to go with them to make sure they behave, and Quil decides she wants to browse the shops for some millinery trimmings to remake a bonnet. At the last minute, even Mr. Bel offers to come with them, so they all walk down to town together, and the conversation is much easier than Valira would expect with Mr. Bel there, though she's still relieved when he excuses himself almost as soon as they arrive.

Almost as soon as he's gone, Mr. Loz walks out of a shop down the street, and with Cordelia and Trilli rushing forward to greet him, Trilli with an arch grin over her shoulder, Valira can hardly help walking after them, Quil in her wake, to greet him. To her surprise, up close, he looks exhausted. There are circles beneath his eyes, and a feverish glint to them, and he looks thin as well, and she asks “Mr. Loz, are you quite well?” without meaning to as soon as she sees him.

He turns from Trilli and Cordelia with a smile that goes from tired to pleased, and something rushes in her head as he takes her hand to bow over, his fingertip brushing her wrist in a way that makes it all too easy to remember that he isn't wearing gloves. “All the better for seeing you, Miss Linnaeus.”

“I'm glad to help in what ways I can, but truly—do you need a healing?”

He smiles and shakes his head, holding her eyes. “No, no. Idilus has already forced a potion on me, I'll be well enough. See? I'm already feeling better.”

And he is, she thinks, standing a little straighter, even if he still looks exhausted, and she tries on a smile of her own, a little surprised at the effort it takes. “I'm glad to hear it. You were ill the other night, then? I wondered where you were, after—after our talk.”

His smile goes much more sober, and she finds herself taking a subtle step to the side with him, out of her sisters' orbit, as he lowers his voice. “You're very kind to wonder. And I wasn't well, but mostly I realized that no matter what I think, it would have been rude to the kind hosts if I forced awkwardness on a guest who's staying with them.”

“A very noble thought,” she says.

Mr. Loz bows again, and releases her hand, and it's only then that she realizes he was holding it the whole time. He opens himself up to the rest of them again, and sweeps a more general bow. “Much as I would love to squire the four of you around town, I am expected back at the school. I am very glad to have run into you, though.”

With that, he walks down the street whistling, and Trilli puts her arm companionably through Valira's, Cordelia coming to her on the other side. “Lucky,” says Cordelia. “No wonder you turned down Mr. Bel, with Mr. Loz so interested.”

“I have spoken to Mr. Loz all of three times,” says Valira, with less protest than she normally might, and Quil raises her eyebrows at her, and the girls start joking about a wedding, and she lets herself be towed along in their wake, to the shops, where Quil does most of the work of reining them in, much to her relief, as there's a headache forming somewhere at the base of her skull.

By the time Mr. Bel rejoins them, looking pleased with himself but not inclined to share where he was, Valira knows that Quil at least is concerned with how quiet she is, and she's relieved to take a quiet walk home, Mr. Bel's awkward presence dampening the girls' enthusiasm and their teasing about Mr. Loz. Halfway there, Quil takes her arm and murmurs a quiet question, but Valira shakes her head and says she's fine, because she really ought to be, and Quil frowns but doesn't press.

“Letter from the hold for you, darling,” Constance says when they're all inside, handing Quil a sealed letter, far more formal than anything they've had from the Windroses so far.

Cordelia and Trilli, irrepressible as ever, try to peer over Quil's shoulder, but Quil evades them both and walks a few steps, frowning with thought. “It's Phi's hand, but I can't think why she would have left a letter instead of called,” she says, and then as she opens the letter, she goes silent, her baffled smile fading away second by second until she looks like she might well cry at any moment.

Constance and Cordelia and Trilli are all staring too, watching the same progression Valira is, and Valira finally manages to shake off whatever's been gripping her since she was in town to step forward and put her hand on Quil's arm. “What's the matter? Bad news?”

“They've gone,” says Quil, voice trembling almost until it breaks on the second word, and hands the letter to Valira instead of continuing.

Phi's language is kind, but not as warm as Valira is used to, and it's clear, too: business has called her and Terry back to Hylene, and their guests have come with them. They wish Quil all the happiness in the world, hope she'll remember them fondly, and are sorry not to have stopped in to say goodbye. “But this makes no sense,” says Valira, and the girls choose that moment to pounce, taking it and immediately making hurt and horrified noises over it, an undercurrent to the way Quil looks. “Surely they're coming back?”

“You read the letter. I don't think they are,” says Quil, and then closes her eyes. “Excuse me for a moment.”

Before she's moved a few steps, there's fog collecting around her and spreading rapidly out, and Valira recognizes a magic surge she's seen a few times before, one that will make thick fog around them, and probably bring Arfil and Mr. Bel to see what's the matter. She gropes in the sudden lack of visibility and catches Quil's hand, reeling her in to put her arms around her. “Spell's already cast, may as well stay. It will reach up to Arfil, won't it?”

Quil swallows audibly in her ear. “I believe so. I really ought to go outside, though, I hate to surge inside.”

In the fog, everyone else is clearly groping around too, because a pair of arms comes around Valira's waist, and then she recognizes Constance's perfume somewhere nearby, all of them holding on to Quil as best they can when they don't see her. “They'll come back,” says Cordelia from Quil's other side. “They like you so much, how could they not?”

The letter is still crumpled in Valira's hand, and it sounds so much more formal than Phi and Terry have ever been with Quil before. She's not surprised when Quil says, voice shaking, “I really don't think they will.”

All of them hold on, until Mr. Bel calls out in confusion and Arfil comes down the creaking stairs, murmuring the familiar words of Dispel Magic as he goes, and there have to be explanations again. None of them mention Quil's wet cheeks before she disappears upstairs.

*

The mood in the household is dismal after that, and between that and his rejected proposal, Valira doesn't blame Mr. Bel for being out often, which he is in the last week of his stay. She hardly notices his absences, after the first few days, when she's busy trying to ply Quil with her favorite foods and activities, which Quil gamely tries to enjoy and clearly doesn't.

She only barely notices when he leaves and returns with Frog, assuming that Frog ran into him on his way to pay a call, until he asks them all to come into the parlor and says, in a stiff tone but with his cheeks a little flushed, “I hope you will all be the first to wish me and Mr. Zanaram happy.”

“On what?” Valira asks, stupidly, because of course she knows as soon as he says that. She just can't believe it.

“On our upcoming marriage,” says Frog, and he's smiling, but she can't imagine it's news to smile about.

Luckily, the rest of her family is filling her lack, Arfil giving Mr. Bel a hearty slap on the back, Constance and Trilli leading the exclamations of surprise and congratulations. Quil gives Valira a quick, concerned look before she joins in, and Valira manages a few platitudes, though her head is spinning with shock, and she's not altogether surprised when Frog excuses himself and her and promises to be back in a few moments.

He turns on her almost as soon as they're out in the garden, arms crossed, scowl firmly attached to his face. “And just what is your problem? Don't tell me you're jealous, when you just turned him down.”

“No, I just—Mr. Bel? Really? He'll make you happy?”

“And why shouldn't having my own household and a good living make me happy?”

Valira bites her lip, but it needs to be said. “Didn't I make it clear, that—I said no to him because he seemed to consider marriage a duty, and didn't much mind about the spouse. I didn't want that for me, and I don't want it for you either.”

“Well, we can't all afford your high morals and sense of romance, can we?” Frog snaps, and Valira nearly reels back with surprise. “He was kind and honest and told me exactly what he's offering, and even if he hadn't, I have siblings enough to stretch my mother's finances thin. I can't afford to turn down proposals from very eligible men. If you can't understand that—”

“I can,” Valira says, thinking of home, of the guilty relief the family must have felt having the excuse to disown her, when she wouldn't have been anything but a burden, when she would have had to marry anyone, anyone at all who wanted her. “I can, I'm sorry. I want happiness and romance for you, but if it's only happiness, well—that's the more important part.”

“Good. I'd hate to have to leave you behind entirely when I leave.”

Leave. Of course he's leaving, to go to Solomon Fyham's estate, and live with Kalon Bel and be his husband, and when he comes back, it will be because Arfil is dead and they've lost their home, and there's no longer the promise of Quil having a home at Fairpoint Hold to keep them in the neighborhood. Everything is changing all at once, and selfishly, all she can think is how lonely it's going to be without him, with only her family for company, and maybe the students at Idilus's school. “You couldn't get rid of me. I wish you all the happiness in the world. I really do.”

“Well, I might not get all of it, but I plan to be very happy indeed,” he assures her, and drags her inside, back to the celebrations, where Mr. Bel is telling Constance that they plan to have the banns read as soon as can be so he can return and marry Frog before the winter sets in in earnest, and Quil gives her a look of such sympathy that all her feelings must be written all over her face.

*

Autumn gets colder and colder, snow threatening, and then spitting, and then bringing them fully into winter and putting an end to Valira's longer painting expeditions outdoors for the season. Life is overall much like it was before the Windroses came to Fairpoint Hold, but every time Valira tells herself that, it feels less true. They go to assemblies, and she tells Idilus's apprentices about druidic magic and dances with his mastery students, Mr. Loz above all. He always dances with her at least once, and usually twice, and she rarely dances with others, finding herself more tired than usual at the parties she used to enjoy.

Quil is much the same, and Valira lays her own sadness at Quil's feet, because Quil won't talk about it, but she's quiet, and sad, and sets herself to practicing her magic with such fervor that there are suddenly more surges than there have been in years, just from the sheer volume of her spellcasting. Valira helps when she can, and keeps an anxious watch when she can't, knowing Constance and Cordelia are doing the same.

Even Arfil is watching, when he usually leaves anything resembling a romantic problem for Constance to handle. He summons Valira up to his office when the snow is finally starting to stick, the day after an assembly where Quil smiled politely while she danced with any number of partners and looked so miserable in the carriage all the way home Valira half wished she could jump out and go home as a falcon or a wolf.

“How is Quil?” he asks.

Valira sighs and clears some papers off a chair to sit down. “Poor. I'm not sure what to do, because she insists she's fine when I try to have a serious talk, and there's nothing out of the ordinary to cheer her up.”

“Sometimes a young person just needs to be heartbroken,” he says, sitting on his desk instead of in his chair and destabilizing at least three things that look dangerous in the process. “It's awful at the time, of course, but it works out well enough in the end. The Windroses were worth a little heartbreak.”

“But I don't understand why they would have left, when they clearly liked her so much,” Valira bursts out, frustrated. “They haven't written, and they might have at least done that. The only one who's written is Iain, and that was barely half a page of platitudes. I think she might feel better if she knew why they left.”

Arfil smiles at her, one of his absent and kind smiles, but his gaze is sharp enough that she feels like he's paying attention. “Sometimes people come in and out of our lives without our ever knowing why. Maybe there was an emergency, or they realized they didn't have the money to keep a third spouse as well as they wanted after all, or it was as simple as deciding that a third person in their marriage was too complex for them. But knowing won't help you, or her. Her heart is broken, and maybe in a month or two that will ease, and someone new will come along. She's still the prettiest girl in town.”

“I'd be offended if I didn't agree,” says Valira, though she can't bring herself to smile.

“And you? Planning to get your heart broken for a little seasoning? Mr. Loz could be a good candidate for that, he's charming enough and due to leave before summer, and showing you particular attention. You and Quil can commiserate over it.”

Valira laughs and shakes her head. “Mr. Loz is pleasant enough, but I don't have any intention of falling in love with anyone any time soon.”

He stands up and comes to kiss her on the forehead. “One very rarely intends it.”

Arfil doesn't seem to have much more to say on the subject, so Valira clasps his hand and leaves him to his work and cajoles Trilli into leading the rest of them in singing some of their favorite songs after dinner, watching Quil until she at last catches the edge of a genuine smile. She may be heartbroken, but Arfil is right. It's not usually a state that lasts forever.

*

The day before Midwinter, and three days before Frog's wedding, Kithri arrives in the middle of the worst storm of the season so far. “Let me in, let me in,” she says as they all exclaim over her in the hall, helping her out of her snowy furs, Valira claiming Torinn to check on his temperature, hummingbirds not being made for such cold weather, even magical ones. “I suppose I got ahead of the letter telling you all I was coming, from how surprised you all look.”

“Doesn't matter,” says Arfil, finally fighting through the rest of them to clasp her hand. “You're always welcome, expecting you or not. And you've arrived just in time to attend a wedding in a few days.”

Kithri looks sharply around at them all. “Surely none of you decided to get married without informing me, much less asking me to officiate?”

Cordelia laughs. “We would never, Aunt Kithri. It's our landlord, he's marrying Frog Zanaram.”

“I'll have to see if I approve of him,” she declares, and lets them show her in, shedding layers as she goes until she's just in her clerical robes, a little travel-worn but wonderfully familiar. She and Arfil are both blithely confusing about how they know each other, but they're dear to each other, and she's stayed at least a few months, usually the winter, with them every year since Valira has arrived. “And you'll all have to tell me about what you've been doing.”

“Tell us about you first,” says Quil, before anyone can start talking, pulling up a chair close to the fire and calling to someone to fetch something warm to Kithri to eat and drink.

Kithri frowns at her for a moment, but then she launches into a tale about a sea voyage she took and the junior cleric who had terrible seasickness the whole way, and Valira sighs in relief and settles in to listen to her, only budging to fetch a blanket when Kithri imperiously requests one.

Midwinter day is full of the bustle of a holiday with a beloved guest in the house, and Valira is glad for the chance at joy, no worries, and her family all gathered around, telling stories and eating some of their summer preserves. Nobody asks or speaks about anything unpleasant, and Quil offers the first genuine smiles Valira's seen from her in months, and she knows she's not the only one who notices it.

After, Valira notices her family picked off one by one, Kithri finding them in all apparent innocence and interrogating them for a few hours. Arfil is first, of course, and then Quil, who takes up a great deal of time, and then the younger girls, and by the morning of Frog's wedding to Mr. Bel, Valira is nervous that she hasn't already been spoken to. Kithri doesn't take her aside, though, as they all bundle into their warmest clothes and drive through the snow to the temple.

Valira doesn't spend much time in the temple, though Constance goes to the weekly service of all gods, and Kithri usually drags them along for a few services when she visits. Today, it's stuffed with Frog's friends and family, the whole of local society turned out to wish him happy. Much as she can't say she's fond of Kalon Bel, she's sorry for him anyway, seeing the pews full of Frog's family, with none of his. If he's in the surface world alone, there must be some family issues in play, but even his much-spoken-of patron hasn't deigned to show his face, so Valira makes sure to smile and wish him happy before the officiant calls them all to order.

For something that changes the course of two lives, the standard marriage ceremony doesn't take very long at all, not when the participants aren't particularly observant and when the officiant doesn't know either of them very well. There are offerings and prayers to each of their primary gods, vows, and then Frog is married, Mr. Bel's husband and a member of his family and going away, to a neighborhood she doesn't know, only to come back to live in the house Valira calls home now.

After, she barely has time to exchange a handclasp with Frog before Mr. Bel says, remarkably apologetic when he can't be all that fond of Valira, that the weather is due to worsen again and he should get them on the road, if they want to be home in any reasonable time, and then he's gone, driving away in Mr. Bel's well-sprung carriage, and the rest of the partygoers are left to Mrs. Zanaram's lavish wedding breakfast without the guests of honor.

Valira stays close to Kithri, but she's relieved when Mr. Loz finds his way to her before the party is over. He looks tired again, often does when she first sees him, but as always, his energy rises after a quick clasp of hands, as though he just needs to see her to shake off his perpetual student exhaustion. “Allow me to present you to my companion,” she says belatedly, stupidly tongue-tied around him when she's so rarely flustered around men. “Reverend Kithri Tealeaf, Mr. Loz, one of Idilus's mastery students. Mr. Loz, Reverend Tealeaf is a Wandering Warden and a friend of Arfil's.”

Mr. Loz immediately sweeps Kithri a deep, showy bow. “Reverend, it's an honor to meet one of your order. I've never met one before.”

“No, we're not common,” she says, and finally produces a smile. “You've been mentioned a few times. Perhaps we should invite a few of your fellow students to dine with us at home sometime this winter while I'm staying.”

Valira is too mortified to blush, and just makes an apologetic grimace at Mr. Loz. He smiles at both of them, easy as ever. “It would be anyone's honor to dine, I'm sure. Name the date, and if I'm free, I'll be happy to come.”

“I would hope you'd make yourself free,” Kithri says, with an edge too severe for banter, and Valira hastily changes the subject to Mr. Loz's studies, and steers Kithri away when she can.

After that, though, Kithri's eyes are on her, and Valira isn't surprised at all when they return home and instead of indulging in the nap she finds herself needing so often after being out in company these days, Kithri drags her out to the garden with the excuse of wanting to know about winter crops, as though she doesn't know Valira believes in letting the soil rest.

For a little while, they walk in silence, even though it's cold. They don't much mind it, unlike Trilli, who complains, and Constance and Quil and Cordelia, who try hard not to but are prone to shivering as soon as snow starts falling. Arfil wouldn't notice the weather if there were hailstones dropping on his head, so in the winter, when Valira wants company for a walk, there's no one better than Kithri.

Of course, that's presuming Kithri doesn't have something to say, and today she does. “It's just as well you didn't marry that Mr. Bel,” she begins, after some interval she clearly planned.

Valira smiles to herself, because that's no shock. Kithri has yelled many a time about all of them being careful and only marrying when they truly want someone. “I know, though I'm glad you agree. I'd hate to have you disappointed in me.”

“Not at all. You were right to turn him down. And you don't seem to be without suitors. Your Mr. Loz is polite enough.”

“He is. He's charming. He—he's had a difficult life. I'm sure Quil has told you about the Windroses, and maybe their guests, but he was terribly treated by Major Ewhoza.” She outlines the story, in its briefest details. “It certainly makes me like him more, and I don't have much respect left for Major Ewhoza.”

“Nor for the Windroses, if they're friends with a man like that,” Kithri muses, and they walk in silence for a minute. “I've spent some time in that part of the country, some years back. I never met the Ewhozas, but I never heard much good of them either, especially not the father and son. The mother wasn't bad, from what I know, but clearly she didn't have much influence on her son.”

“Poor woman,” says Valira, though she feels a little cruel saying it, especially when she doesn't know if the woman is living or dead. “You never heard about the story, though?”

“No, but that was after my time there, from what you've said. Well, it's just as well he's building a life and Major Ewhoza is gone.” Kithri gives her a stern look. “And, mind me, I may like Mr. Loz better than Mr. Bel, but that doesn't mean you should marry him either, even if you do feel sorry for him and I know what that does to young ladies. He's still a student, with no real income of his own, or established household. Don't go falling in love with him.”

Valira laughs. “I'm not planning to fall in love with anyone.”

Kithri snorts, but she doesn't comment, and not long after she turns the conversation to Quil and the girls and Valira is relieved to move on and talk about them instead of herself.

*

A little more than a week into Kithri's visit, Quil speaks into the dark not long after Valira blew out her last candle, at barely more than a whisper. “Kithri has offered to take me with her when she leaves. She has lodgings in Hylene, and plans to stay a few months, to see society and visit with her order, and she thinks it would do me good to go. That even if the Windroses and their family are there, we would travel in very different circles.”

Valira props herself up on her elbows, and tries her hardest to ignore the pang that gives her. “It's not a bad idea. You'll take Hylene by storm, I know it.”

“But could I leave all of you? And you especially? You've been so tired lately, and you just lost Frog, and the girls are so distracted by Idilus's students, and I should really stay.”

“That's nonsense. I'm a little tired, yes, but that's nothing terrible, and you'll be back by summer anyway. I'd miss you, but we'd write, and I think it would do you good. Remind you that there are other people out there for you.”

“I know there are.” Quil's voice goes a lot softer. “I just liked those people very much.”

Valira would happily slap the Windroses if she met them again, for the way Quil says that. “You should go. Even if you don't marry someone, you should have the chance for a Hylene season.”

“So should you.”

“Yes, but I don't want one, really. You can't pretend that you don't.” The silence that follows only proves her right. “The girls will be jealous,” she finally adds. “You'd better let Kithri tell them, or they'll complain right up until you leave.”

Quil laughs, and the two of them whisper nonsense about all the adventures she'll have in Hylene until Quil's whispers turn into mumbles and then nonsense and then pure sleep.

Valira lays awake for a while longer, and smiles her brightest and happiest the next day when Kithri announces her plan to the whole family and gets Constance and Arfil's approval for it.

*

After that, the winter seems to rush away. Snow prevents most of the social events, and they can't even manage to bring Idilus and his students to dinner, though Kithri does go to teach some of his apprentices and journeymen about clerical magic when she cares to get through the snow. She teases about only seeing Mr. Loz from a distance, and Valira rolls her eyes and goes back to helping Quil embroider new trimming for a gown she's making over, though Constance is a better needlewoman than either of them and mostly sighs over their work.

The roads are still more ice than mud when Kithri announces her intention to leave within a week, claiming she has omens of better weather coming, and can easily get her carriage through the muck by Yondalla's grace. That isn't, as far as Valira understands, Yondalla's greatest talent, but she knows far better than to argue with Kithri on that front.

The last week becomes a frenzy, all of them doing just what they were doing before but with a frantic air that's a constant reminder that Quil is leaving them, if only for a while, hopefully to heal. They pack her wardrobe away, Arfil wards her against surges as best he can, and by the end of the week, they're all just finding chores to do, because it's better than sitting around with the knowledge that she's going.

“I'll write every day,” Quil promises on the morning they leave, hugging her mother first in the lineup of people waiting to say goodbye.

“You'll write once a week if that, once you're the most popular young lady in Hylene,” says Cordelia, and they all seize the joke, talking about Quil's likely conquests as they hug her goodbye.

Valira ends up going last. “Every day is fine by me,” she assures Quil, who's all but trembling, whether from the late winter chill or emotion.

“I'll hardly be able to avoid it, with so many things to see.” Quil squeezes her and lets go. “And you'll write too? I don't want you making a conquest back here without me hearing about it.”

“As though that's likely,” says Valira, and waves her away. “But of course. You'll be sick of me, I'll write so much.”

“I couldn't possibly be,” Quil assures her, and then there's a flurry of last-minute activity, the last few things packed into Kithri's carriage, Arfil handing the two of them in, and then they're all waving, shouting goodbyes until the carriage has lurched out of sight down the road, not mired in mud more through Yondalla's grace than because the road is worth driving on.

Valira stands there longest, until Cordelia doubles back to fetch her, arm through hers and stubbornly strong, pulling her inside and back to life, though it seems even duller than before with Quil gone too.

*

Valira's attack of the doldrums only lasts a week before a letter from Frog arrives inviting her to spend the spring at his establishment, once the roads are clear for people who don't have divine blessings to get through. Valira wants to write back and tease that he wants company already, so perhaps she was right about the happiness of his marriage, but that's still a sore spot between them, and she likes the thought of traveling while Quil does, finding another place to be for a little while, to get over what feels like constant exhaustion.

Letter in hand, she speaks to the family after dinner that night.

Arfil and Constance are both smiling, but Trilli almost immediately crosses her arms. “That's not fair. You and Quil both leaving, I mean, and what, just because we're younger we have to stay home?”

Constance actually laughs at that, the happiest Valira has seen her since Quil left. “That is the precise reason, yes. And you and Mr. Zanaram—forgive me, Mr. Bel-Zanaram—were never close. If a good friend of yours invites you away, and you're properly taken care of and chaperoned, I'll allow that. Otherwise, you'll just have to make do with local society. Or perhaps you don't want to go to local assemblies when they start again, now that Valira and Quil leaving has freed up some partners for you? The mastery students will just have to do without our household—”

“Mama,” Cordelia says, exasperated in the way only a girl of her age can be. “I know, and so does Trilli. But you can't blame us for wanting a little adventure.”

“You'll have plenty of it someday,” Valira promises, smiling at the two of them with their twin scowls. “And in the meantime, you can flirt with all the mastery students you want.”

“Even Mr. Loz?” asks Cordelia, smile going sly.

“If you can win him, you have my blessing,” Valira says with a laugh, “though Kithri would remind you that he has no establishment and you can do better.”

“I'm patient,” says Cordelia primly, a total lie, and all of them laugh, and Valira is forgiven for leaving them as well as Quil.

*

Valira takes the post coach to Hylene first, nearly a month later when the roads are clear enough to drive on. Hylene is only a little out of the way, and she's had letter upon letter from Quil, but she wants to check in on her herself, so she takes the family's good wishes, a basket of little presents from Constance for her elder daughter, and bounces her way from home to Hylene in a long and dirty day, arriving at Kithri's residence as dusk falls with her skirt covered in road dust.

Quil is already waiting outside for her when the coach stops and Valira stumbles out, her trunk and Constance's basket dropped with no ceremony at all so she can give Quil a long hug and then step back to smile at her, taking in her new dress and the smile on her face. “Look at you! You must be setting the fashions by now.”

“Hardly,” says Quil, with a roll of her eyes, and Kithri comes out, a servant on her heels, to get Valira and her belongings inside. “I can't believe I'm finally seeing you and you're only here a day. Don't you want to stay a little longer?”

“Are you inviting someone into my home?” Kithri asks with no rancor at all. “I do want to talk to you, Valira, but not about staying here if your friend is expecting you.”

“Frog really is expecting me,” she tells them both. “And if his marriage to Mr. Bel is miserable then I'd rather drag him away sooner than later.”

Kithri nods approvingly at that practicality, and then she's taking everything in hand with the practiced ease of someone who's run her own household for years, wherever she may find herself, and Valira is sent to clean up and change, her traveling dress taken for cleaning in preparation for the next day's journey. By the time she's scrubbed and refreshed, there's a sumptuous dinner on the table waiting for them all.

“Oh, there's no news,” she says when Quil asks right away. “Nothing I haven't said in a letter, anyway. The girls are very angry that we're both gone and they're stuck at home with all your mother's attention to make sure they're behaving, but extra dances with the mastery students are making that easier on them. I'm interested in what you've been doing.”

Quil regales her with stories of parties, all the people she's met and all the people she's only seen from a distance, but the way she tells it, Hylene is populated by everyone but the only people she would have every right to call on and receive invitations from. Valira doesn't mention that, though, until Kithri has dismissed them to, as she puts it, “Go and giggle where you won't be bothering an old woman.”

There's little giggling, though, as they get ready for bed together, the routine of years making it easy to change, to brush each other's hair out as they talk. “The Windroses?” Valira asks, because there's no reason to dance around it.

“I called once, and Lanra received me. He didn't ask me back, or return my visit, though he didn't seem happy about it.” Quil's voice is reduced to a whisper. “I haven't seen them, or heard from them. I must have done something, but I can't think what.”

“You did nothing,” Valira says, fiercer than she means to. “I don't know what made them act like this, but it's nothing you did.”

“It must be. One of Phi's other brothers was at one of Kithri's clerical parties, Ulla, and I think he recognized my voice and walked away before he had to cut me. That has to mean I did something, doesn't it?” The longer she talks, the more her voice trembles, and Valira puts an arm around her. “And I hear about the family all the time, because Lady Gariel is the queen of Hylene society and Phi is her sister too, or some kind of relation, and town is wonderful except for the times when I have to think about them, and that's far too often.”

Valira has to try hard not to clench her fists. “If I saw them tomorrow, I'd spit on them rather than talk to them.”

“Oh, don't. I can't blame them for any of this.”

“I certainly can.” But it's only distressing Quil more to hear that, so Valira forces her tone as light as she can get it. “Ought I blame love and marriage instead? It raises our expectations, it's no wonder we get into snarls like this.”

“You don't.”

“Which one of us was proposed to by a man in very insulting terms this past autumn? I don't think it was you, so clearly we both have our own scrapes.” But she can't feel Quil's mood lightening, so she abandons the attempt at happy commentary. “It will pass. You know what kind of people attract you now, and you're in the best place in the country to find someone like them. Let yourself enjoy it, won't you?”

There's a silence, and finally Quil sighs. “I can promise you to try.”

“That's all I'll ask for, then,” says Valira, and lets her change the subject.

*

Kithri catches her over breakfast the next morning, Quil declaring that she prefers to have tea in her room to coming down for breakfast now that she's a fancy city lady in a complete lie, which means Kithri's been planning the chat.

Valira has too. “How is she, really?”

Kithri shakes her head. “She'll get through it. She's been through worse. I'd love to give those Windroses a piece of my mind, though.”

“So would I, for that matter,” says Valira. “You'll keep her going to parties, though?”

“Of course I will, through the spring at least. I thought I'd return her home for the summer, and I have some scheduled traveling to do.” She looks up from her breakfast to raise her eyebrows at Valira. “I thought I would invite you to come with me. You haven't traveled much since Arfil brought you home, and I know you like it. Lots of good gardens, in the country I'm planning to visit.”

Valira smiles, ready to abandon the serious conversation. “Really? I'd love to, if you won't be sick of company by summer. Though the girls will object.”

“When the girls are old enough to make wise choices with little supervision, I'll take them on trips too,” says Kithri with a sniff. “If you don't mind me taking care of occasional clerical business, I won't mind you dragging me into gardens.”

Valira laughs. “A very fair deal indeed.”

By the time Quil comes downstairs, Kithri and Valira are looking over a map, tracing the path Kithri intends to take, one that will get Valira home in time for autumn harvest. Between her visit to Frog and her time with Kithri, her garden won't be much to speak of, but at least she'll be back for the orchard.

Quil, seeing them, sits down with a smile. “You've decided to go on the trip, then?”

“Of course I have,” says Valira, and pulls her into the conversation until enough time has passed that she knows she's going to have to get the stage to Frog. Kithri and Quil see her off with affection and a few tears on Quil's part, promises to write, since they have her direction, and then Valira is bundled into another muddy carriage, and she leaves for the second half of her journey in a good mood.

*

Frog has settled, she decides as she approaches, in a pretty part of the country. She knows he'll be back to their rolling farm fields someday, when Mr. Bel takes over his house, but for now he's in the deepest part of Noreneshire, not far from their principal town, and living on an estate nestled at the foot of the largest mountain Valira has ever seen. It looms ever closer for hours before they get anywhere near it, and it seems all the bigger for the fact that there are no foothills, no smaller mountains. It's the start of its range, and the top of it reaches nearly up to the clouds.

Sir Solomon's estate is very nearly at the foot of the mountain, Valira discovers as the stage rumbles ever closer. His fields are pleasantly full of sheep, though the grass is higher than she would guess, and there are cows as well, in fields much more well-grazed. He doesn't seem to specialize in crops, but as they pass his estate, she can tell that his grounds are well-curated, and the house large.

Frog and Mr. Bel live in the dower house, to the back of the estate, nearly in the woods, and it's late in the afternoon before she arrives, more exhausted after her second day of travel, turning up on their doorstep bedraggled and embarrassed about it.

Before she can knock on the door and speak to whatever staff they have answering it, Frog throws it open with a much wider smile than she was expecting from him. “We've been expecting you for most of an hour,” he says, already hefting up her heavier bag.

“I can't help that you live way out here, on the least sensibly laid out estate in the country,” she says, following him in.

To her surprise, Mr. Bel is waiting in the hall, with an awkward and tight smile for her. “Miss Linnaeus, I hope your journey wasn't too difficult.”

“Breaking it in Hylene was very good for making it less tedious than it might have been,” she assures him. “It's a lovely part of the country. I didn't realize you were so close to the mountain. Does Sir Solomon's estate go up it at all?”

Mr. Bel shakes his head. “The mountain has its own law. Please, come in, we'll give you the tour.”

They hold good to that, and to Valira's surprise, hold to the “we” as well. It's a lovely house, decorated in a style at least forty years out of date, probably furnished still from the last time the dower house was in use and not updated for a new tenant, but Mr. Bel seems to know the history of all the major pieces in a way that makes her think Sir Solomon must have been bragging about it. Frog hands her bags off to a footman who materializes with a bow and then takes as active a part in the tour, pointing out the changes he's made to the decoration and the arrangement of rooms.

Much as Valira thinks he could be happier with someone else, it's obvious that he _is_ happy, that he's very much enjoying being in charge of the household, secure and grown up and suddenly fit to chaperone her when a few months ago they were both under the eye of Constance or Mrs. Zanaram at any event they attended.

After a while, when the house has been thoroughly gone over, Frog shows her to the bedroom she'll be staying in, where they surprise a maid unpacking Valira's bags, and Valira dismisses her and takes the task over, since if she knows Frog at all, he'll have something to say.

“You look tired,” he says first. “And not just from travel.”

Valira pauses in unpacking to think over that, because he's not saying it to needle her. When he uses that tone, he means it, and it's always worth thinking about the things Frog says that he really means. “I suppose I am. It's lonely at home with you and Quil both gone. I feel like any time I leave the house I come back and fall asleep immediately.”

Frog frowns at her. “Well, we'll get you out in the sunshine and keep you occupied.”

“And you? You don't look tired at all, you look happy.”

“I am, if you can keep yourself from scoffing about it.” He shrugs. “Being married suits me. And being married to Kalon suits me. You'll see.”

“And the great Sir Solomon? Will I meet him?”

At that, Frog rolls his eyes at her, hearing the jibe in her voice for the way Mr. Bel clearly idolizes his landlord. “Oh, probably. You're staying on his estate. He goes driving around every few days, and he'll often stop in the garden to see how Kalon and I are getting along. And he knows we have a guest, so he'll be interested. Give it a few days and he'll stop by.”

“I'll look forward to it.” Frog sits in the vanity table's seat while Valira puts things away, silent, just watching her, and Valira finds herself uncomfortable, wondering if she really does look so tired, and if it's just three months of absence that make him seem so much more settled and happy or if he really is. Incredibly, though she can't imagine being happy married to his husband, she suspects he really is. “I'm glad I didn't marry Mr. Bel,” she finally says, putting away the last of her dresses, and holds a hand up to forestall his scowl. “The two of you are clearly well-suited, and we wouldn't have been nearly as much, so it all worked out for the best.”

“I suppose it did,” says Frog, and shepherds her out of the room.

*

Valira hasn't ever lived in a household like the one Frog and Mr. Bel have built together. It's just them and their servants and the quiet rhythm of their lives, no loud family to entertain or mediate between, no elders gently reproving or quietly disapproving or holding the reins, despite Sir Solomon's distant and somewhat paternal interest.

“I fear we'll be dull,” Mr. Bel says on her first full day there a few hours after breakfast, when he's back at a writing desk near the window. He can't possibly be writing letters all the time, but she has no idea what he could be writing. “I have my work, and Frog his, and there's little society in this part of the country other than Sir Solomon's parties.”

Valira might be used to livelier society, but spring is coming, which means she couldn't possibly be bored, and she tells them so. “I'll only be bored if you keep me out of your garden,” she adds when that makes both of them smile.

“Why do you think I invited you?” Frog says easily, and Mr. Bel frowns at him and then peers at Valira like perhaps he's concerned Valira believed him. “Sir Solomon was very interested in your druidic skills, so we have permission to change whatever you like in the garden.”

Valira grins at him, and includes Mr. Bel in it to assuage his worries. “Well, I'll take advantage of it,” she assures them, and over the next few days she does, not caring that the garden beds are still more mud than soil, replotting them to her heart's content, making them fitting of the rest of the estate.

When she's inside, Mr. Bel is nearly always sitting somewhere scribbling, and she asks Frog about it when he comes out to bring her a cup of tea and insist she warm up for a moment. To her surprise, Frog laughs outright. “I was surprised when he brought it up, actually—he's a novelist, of all things. Some Underdark dramas that I suspect made Mezzon too hot to hold him, which is why the man who bankrolls his publisher has him living here.”

Valira takes the teacup and only then looks up at him, eyes wide. “We've been reading those books—it's even his initials, how did I not guess? That's impressive.”

“Regretting your decision?” he asks, eyebrows up.

“No, not at all. It's just a shock that you, the most practical person I've ever met, to have ended up with anyone who does anything so frivolous as write novels.”

“It's a shock to me too,” says Frog, but there's something in his face, something softer than Valira has seen in anything but his most vulnerable moments.

“I'm glad you're happy,” she says impulsively, and he smiles at her, kind and a little superior, maybe hearing the unexpected loneliness she's feeling, thinking of him, not just gone from home but in a marriage full of affection that makes her feel a little bit of an outsider, just like she would have felt with Quil if the Windroses had treated her more kindly.

Frog just stands there, drinks tea while she does, and then clasps her shoulder when he takes the cup back. “You will be too, someday,” he says, and goes back inside.

Valira is still thinking about it later when she's inside and they're out, walking as they seem to do every night, a tradition they haven't invited her to and that she'd never dream of inviting herself along for. As she sits, staring out the window but not seeing much, a maid comes in and bobs a curtsy. “Message from the house, miss,” she says, and Valira looks at her, startled. “Addressed to you and the gentlemen. You can open it, if you'd like.”

“I would,” she says, because it's a distraction and because she can't help being nosy.

The maid puts the paper in her hands and bobs her way out of the room again, and Valira opens the seal, noting it's a device she doesn't recognize and will have to ask Frog about later. There, in somewhat haphazard handwriting, is an invitation for the three of them to attend dinner at Sir Solomon's table the very next night, and Valira blinks at it for a moment and sets it aside.

When Frog and Mr. Bel return, she offers it to them almost as soon as they sit down, and Mr. Bel raises his eyebrows, looking from it to her. “You've been done a very great honor,” he says, which feels like unnecessary drama, but even Frog looks impressed, so she makes an encouraging gesture. “Sir Solomon doesn't entertain very often, and even if we live on his estate, we've only been to dinner three times this winter, and two of those were after I'd already been there for a publishing meeting. He must be curious about you.”

“I can't think why.” Frog rolls his eyes, and she rolls hers right back. “I'm not being self-deprecating, I honestly don't know why I'm interesting enough to merit an unusual invitation. Perhaps he's having other guests, with the spring come and the roads clear, and it seemed rude not to invite us.”

“Perhaps,” says Mr. Bel. “But regardless, I'd say you should prepare yourself for his attention.”

Valira has a sudden and horrible image of an elderly man, no spouse or heirs that she knows of, waiting like a spider in a web for an eligible young lady to appear, and has to try hard not to shudder, but she thinks Frog would have warned her if that was in the wind. “I can't think why,” she says again, but when they just look at her, she promises to be ready for his honored attention, and tries her very hardest not to sound sarcastic.

*

If the dower house is a relic of a past generation, the great house has clearly been decorated by a magpie. The outside is a venerable fortress, probably meant originally to protect the locals from the mountain, the mountain from the locals, or both, but inside, it's decorated in someone's collection of things from everywhere, things Valira has only seen described in Arfil's books. Beautifully woven rugs and tapestries from the Boreal Valley, arcane items stored in glass cases on the walls, paintings in a variety of styles in between them.

Valira tries not to crane her neck as they walk through the entryway, bowed in by a butler and shown through the house by a footman, Sir Solomon apparently too important to greet his guests. There are no sounds of a party, so it seems Frog and Mr. Bel were right and it will just be the four of them for dinner.

It's a huge house, packed with the collection that speaks to expensive taste and wide travels, with fewer servants bustling around than she would expect. Then again, Sir Solomon is a bachelor, so while he might want a lot of maids to dust his collection of everything, there's no need for much else.

Before she has time to fully think about that, they arrive in a small room decorated in red and gold, where their host is waiting for them. Or she assumes it's him, since there's no one else there and the footman leaves them with the air of presenting them to royalty. He's an unassuming personage. No one has mentioned him being a mage, but he's wearing mages' robes, shockingly out of style for someone who clearly likes pretty things, and he's simply an old human man, nondescript enough that she could forget what he looks like just by turning around.

“Come in, come in,” he says, beckoning them over. “Welcome, thank you for coming.”

They go, since they can't very well do otherwise even though the room isn't big enough that he wouldn't be able to inspect them from across it, and Mr. Bel gives a remarkably deep bow for someone who's his publishing patron and must be some kind of mentor. “Sir Solomon, thank you for your invitation. Let me present Miss Valira Linnaeus to you.”

Valira curtsies. “It's an honor, Sir Solomon.”

“Linnaeus? I've heard of the family, I think, but I didn't think this area was their home.”

Frog is too good a friend to look at her, or try to explain for her, and is even a good enough friend that Mr. Bel looks politely baffled instead of pitying or nervous. “I'm not part of that branch of the family,” she says with perfect if roundabout honesty, and has never been more grateful for how steady she can keep her voice even in situations like this. “I'm a ward of Master Wizard Arfil.”

There's a gleam in his eyes at that. Arfil is quite famous, after all. “I will have to ask you about your guardian while you're here, Miss Linnaeus. Do allow me to show you in to dinner.”

As far as etiquette is concerned, that ought to be Frog's honor, but if Sir Solomon doesn't care about protocol in his own house, Valira isn't going to complain. She takes his offered arm instead, as lightly as she can, since he looks just old enough to be getting frail, a little younger than Arfil, perhaps.

He swings the heavy door to the dining room open with an uplifted hand making his use of magic obvious, showing a room with a table meant to seat twenty, the four places set at the lonely far end. His collection reaches even here—Valira recognizes precious stones, a tarnished amulet she's seen in Arfil's books, and more art and sculpture. He likes to impress, even if he doesn't entertain frequently.

He shows her to her seat with courtly grace, waits for Frog and Mr. Bel to sit, summons footmen to serve, and sits down to pin Valira with a look. “How did you come to know the master wizard, then? That sounds like a story worth hearing.”

“He happened upon my cousin and me when we were in need, and offered us a home, particularly as he already had Mrs. Myale and her two girls under his protection, and thought we could all keep each other company.”

He frowns. “Do I know the Myale family?”

As far as Valira knows about Quil and Cordelia's absent father, he was an officer and not much worth knowing, and whether he's dead or not the community is happy to agree that Constance is a respectable widow. “They're gentlefolk, but no great name.”

“Well, you must all be very grateful to the master wizard for taking you in.”

Arfil put up with her gratitude and offers of service for less time than it took to get from the Greenwoods to Tyneshire. “I'm very aware of his kindness, of course.”

Sir Solomon takes a few bites of his dinner, and Valira remembers to do it as well. His cook is good. Perhaps another acquisition on his travels, she thinks, more disparaging than she really should be about a man she's just met. “And you aren't engaged, or in hopes of it?”

Valira does look to Frog for help then, but he just shrugs helplessly. She reminds herself to shout at him later for not warning her she would be subject to an interrogation and pastes on a pleasant smile. “No, sir, I'm not.”

He frowns. “And how can that be? Well. I know Kalon was planning to ask you or one of your fellow wards, and understand that you turned him down. A piece of young person's foolishness, I suppose. I hope you haven't sent away many suitors so.”

Frog does intervene then, much to her relief, though she can't say she likes the turn of subject he chooses much more than the last one. “Miss Linnaeus was lucky enough to meet your nephew while he stayed in our neighborhood, Sir Solomon, and spend several days in his company.”

There's a gleam of discomfiting interest at that. “Of course, I should have realized. Tell me, what did you think of my nephew?”

She can't very well tell Major Ewhoza's uncle that he was rude, cold, and clearly has a cruel streak, but that leaves her with very little to say. “There were always so many people around that I hardly think I know him very well, even if we did stay under the same roof for a few days while my sister was ill. He was a perfect gentleman, of course, but beyond that I can't say.”

Sir Solomon purses his lips, displeased somehow with that answer, though Frog looks openly relieved at how circumspect she managed to be. “He didn't charm you, then?”

To her surprise, Mr. Bel is the one to rescue her this time. “He seems a reserved man,” he says, shockingly adroit when she's used to him stumbling. Either he's more on his mettle, or Frog has been good for him. “It's hard for that to charm, on short acquaintance. It's hardly a fair question.”

“I suppose,” says Sir Solomon, but he seems displeased, and shows it by launching into thoroughly questioning Valira on every member of her household, their talents and interests and connections, while she tries her best to balance answering with keeping the privacy of her family in mind.

By the time they've finished dessert and she and Frog can excuse themselves so Sir Solomon and Mr. Bel can discuss business, Valira is ready to flee back home and not rest on Sir Solomon's charity a moment longer. Frog, judging from his unusually sympathetic expression as he pours her some tea, knows it. “He's not usually so bad. Though you should prepare yourself to be asked to play the harp, probably one so expensive you're frightened to touch it, and then to have your performance critiqued in favor of ones he's seen in the places he's been.”

“You could have warned me,” she reproaches him, because it's clear that he got this treatment when he met Sir Solomon, and that probably there was a pipe he was very worried about breaking, and an expectation of entertainment. “Weeks ago. I wouldn't have come. Or I would have packed armor.”

“Yes, exactly.” Frog laughs at whatever face she makes. “He's not so bad, really. We honestly hardly see him, except when he wants one of Kalon's chapters faster. I doubt you'll have to go through this ordeal again while you're here.”

Valira crosses her arms, not quite ready to forgive him for keeping that back. “He's just what I would expect from an uncle of Ewhoza's. I'm sure if I mentioned Mr. Loz, he would think that what his nephew did was just what he should have.”

“I've never heard you defend anyone as much as you do Mr. Loz. I'm not sure if that means you like him that much, or dislike Ewhoza that much.” Frog raises his eyebrows. “Should we be expecting a happy announcement?”

“No. I like his company and won't miss him a bit when he goes on to the next stage of his mastery program.”

“Good. I feared your exhaustion when you came was hiding some heartache from having left your suitor. Then again, you've seemed better these past few days.”

Valira blinks. “Have I? I haven't noticed, I suppose. Must be the spring coming, or spending time with you, or maybe being away from the girls, who seem to be trying their hardest to dangle after all the mastery students, given the opportunity. Cordelia's even been sly enough to start befriending the wife of the one of them who's married, I think Trilli is jealous she didn't think of it first.”

“Well, regardless of the reason, I'm glad you're doing better.”

He wouldn't have said it a few months ago, or at least she doesn't think he would have. He's always been brusque, not interested in sharing emotions. She'd already known the marriage was good for him, that he liked having his own household, but that it might improve him, the way it's improved Mr. Bel's humor and sociability, had never occurred to her. Now she can't help noticing it. “I'm glad you are too,” she says.

Predictably, that embarrasses him enough that he changes the subject, and they're safely discussing Frog's recent experiments in fletching arrows when the other two join them, in the middle of their own conversation about publishing numbers.

Almost immediately, Sir Solomon breaks off the conversation to smile at Valira. “Miss Linnaeus, I should have told you at dinner when he came up, but I only remembered after. My nephew Captain Ewhoza will be visiting here quite soon. He tends to come in the spring, before the planting truly begins, to pay me a visit. What do you think of that?”

“He's a very dutiful nephew, it seems,” she says, and hopes that she doesn't look half as horrified as she feels.

If she does, nobody comments on it, and Sir Solomon talks about Ewhoza for a little longer before lapsing into telling the stories of the various objects in his room before, as predicted, asking Valira what she plays, placing a lap harp in front of her, and staring expectantly until she produces what Trilli calls “something passing for music.” Constance assures her that she's not bad, but it's hard to believe it when her cousin is so good at music she's starting to be able to cast spells with it.

Sir Solomon seems at least somewhat pleased and releases them after a long and fretful evening to return to the dower house.

Valira, used to eavesdroppers and not knowing what kind of surveillance objects Sir Solomon might have in his dragon's hoard of a house, doesn't say anything she actually wants to say until they're through the doors of their own establishment. “I cannot believe Major Ewhoza is coming here.”

Frog just laughs at her. “As I said, I've hardly been at the main house since I've been here. And there will be uneven numbers if we're invited while he's here, so I don't think you'll have to worry about it. The grounds are big, and even if he's around for a while, you'll barely have a chance of seeing him.”

*

Five days later, Major Ewhoza follows Mr. Bel home from a meeting with Sir Solomon.

Valira, caught in the middle of fretting over a letter to Quil, trying to spin garden plans and the neighborhood's limited society into something pleasant and entertaining to banish the melancholy from Quil's last, nearly dumps out her inkwell in her haste to stand, hating being caught at disadvantage. Frog, peacefully fletching arrows, stands a moment later, with all his gear properly stowed.

“I apologize for intruding,” Ewhoza says to begin, with a smile that's more like a grimace and a bow a little deep for an afternoon call. “But when Mr. Bel and my uncle told me that I have acquaintances here, I could hardly go without greeting you.”

“Welcome,” says Frog, as of course he should. He's their host, after all, and after a moment, Ewhoza looks at him, remembering that as well, and it's only then Valira realizes he was watching her before. “Sir Solomon did tell us you were coming, but it's an honor to see you so soon. When did you arrive?”

“Yesterday,” he says, which really is soon, for two people he knew hardly at all and liked less than that. “I hear you also recently arrived, Miss Linnaeus.”

“Yes. Mr. Bel and Mr. Zanaram-Bel were kind enough to invite me to their establishment. The travel was a little muddy but otherwise uneventful. I hope yours was likewise?”

“It's been much drier this past week or two,” he offers, and the two of them stand in awkward silence before Frog interrupts, asking how long Ewhoza plans to stay and how his winter in Hylene was, which at least stretches the conversation to the ten minutes that's the minimum for an afternoon call. Almost as soon as it's up, with such exactness that Valira wonders if he's looking at a clock, Ewhoza bows to them all. “I won't intrude on your time much longer, but I hope to see you while I'm in the neighborhood.”

“Of course,” says Mr. Bel, somehow the most polite of them under the circumstances, Frog having edged close enough to Valira to pinch her before she can say something stupid. “Let me show you out.”

And with that, they both disappear from the doorway they hardly left, and Valira turns a dismayed look on Frog as soon as they're out of earshot. “You said we'd hardly have to see him at all!”

Frog just sighs, put-upon as ever. “And that's what I thought, but I suppose I miscalculated. You'd better be polite, Valira. I'm pretty sure he's Sir Solomon's heir, so I'm going to have to be on good terms with him.” He raises an eyebrow. “And for all your feelings about Mr. Loz, you could try liking him. I don't think he's such a monster as you make him out to be.”

“I am not making anyone out to be a monster,” she objects, and they have a friendly quarrel about it until Mr. Bel's arrival silences them. It's a quarrel that's impossible to win, but Frog still smirks like he beat her at it on and off for the rest of the day.

*

It's only a few more days before they receive an imperious invitation to return to Sir Solomon's house for dinner, where he's inviting much of the neighborhood to see his nephew and expects their presence. Valira glowers at Frog until he laughs at her and prepares herself for an ordeal, since the combination of uncle and nephew is likely to make her want to scream.

This time, their arrival at the main house is much grander. However sparse Sir Solomon's staff seemed last time, there seems to be an army of servants showing them in to meet other local notables, though this neighborhood is little more urbane than Valira's, no grand titles or heroes gracing the table. Instead, a lawyer and her husband, a spinster doctor with sharp eyes and a dress years out of style, a man dressed mostly in furs with an accent who introduces himself as a representative of the mountain, and the cleric of the local temple, a nervous young man with ears that nearly double the width of his head, make up the party. In that company, Sir Solomon and his nephew, as a wealthy landowner and a highly promoted officer, are the undoubted stars.

Even with the expanded list of guests, the table in the dining room is nowhere near full. Whatever this house was built to be, in its history, it's fallen far since then, no matter what ornaments Sir Solomon has decorated it with. Valira feels a little pity, but she's not sure if it's for him or for the house itself, and she doesn't have time to examine the thought before everyone is sitting down in a flurry of chairs.

With so many guests, Sir Solomon has to stick to protocol, so Valira is relieved to be relegated to the far end of the table, with the cleric to talk to across the way and Frog to her side. However, there aren't enough of them that the conversation stays local. Sir Solomon speaks, and the neighborhood snaps to attention, with varying degrees of obsequy and nervousness.

And when he speaks, of course, it's about and to his nephew. As the courses pass, Valira is treated to a history of Ewhoza's military career and family connections, and the only saving grace is that Ewhoza looks as miserable as she is annoyed by having to hear about it. The only time a smile crosses his face is when Sir Solomon brings up his cousin, and even then it's faint.

“Miss Denrathy's studies are going well, both in academics and in combat, though she's always happier doing the latter.” He inclines his head, to Valira's surprise, to the cleric. “And she enjoys her temple studies as well, and is thinking of taking oaths when she comes of age.”

“From a wizard in the seat to a paladin?” asks the lawyer's husband, eyes gleaming. “What an honor for the neighborhood!”

Valira blinks, and is glad when the cleric, who did manage to tell her before Sir Solomon started monopolizing everyone's attention that he's had his seat less than six months, asks the question she wants to. “Miss Denrathy is the heir to the baronetcy, then?”

“She is,” says Ewhoza, and his smile turns from faint to definite. “The relations are all too complicated for the dinner table, but someday she'll be here.”

“And I'm very grateful to you, nephew, for caring for her when I can't—always the chance I'll be called away, you see.” He nods at Mr. Bel, and at the man from the mountain, who looks forbidding rather than grateful for the attention. “I'm pleased her studies go well. You should have brought her. She should get to know the lands she'll administer someday.”

Ewhoza frowns a little. “Unfortunately, her studies are in a demanding phase, and I couldn't get her away. Perhaps in the autumn, uncle.”

And with that the conversation turns, and thankfully dissolves so that Valira can ask questions and participate in the discussion without feeling like Sir Solomon is watching her every move.

Of course, almost as soon as dinner is over, again, he asks her to play the harp once again, and most of the company has the decency to ignore her, but Ewhoza comes over closer to watch. That's annoying enough, and brings with it the added annoyance of Sir Solomon's attention, which follows close at Ewhoza's heels. “Has Miss Linnaeus played for you before, nephew?” he asks, and he's just close enough to them that his imperious tone doesn't quite necessitate a halting of everyone else's conversations.

“I had that pleasure when we stayed at Fairpoint Hold, yes,” Ewhoza says.

Valira glances up at him. “You can hardly call it a pleasure. It's not my greatest accomplishment.”

“What is your greatest accomplishment?” Sir Solomon drifts a little closer, to the evident interest of the lawyer's husband and the doctor, who seem to be having a gossip.

She can hardly answer that while in the middle of a song, and tries not to look as exasperated or martyred as she feels, hoping Frog will chime in, but instead it's Ewhoza who speaks, glancing over his shoulder at his uncle. “Botanical drawings. They're very accurate flowers and plants, aren't they, Miss Linnaeus?”

“I try my best,” she says, and hopes that the words cover up the fumble in her fingers. “I'm surprised you'd remember such trivial facts about me,” she adds as lightly as she can. He might be the kind of man whose honor stops at home, according to Mr. Loz, and personally annoying besides, but nobody deserves their relatives breathing down their necks like Sir Solomon is doing. “I didn't think you'd been paying so much attention while I was staying at the hold.”

To her surprise, he winces at that, though she thinks she's the only one who sees, besides perhaps Mr. Bel, who gives them a sharp look. Before he can answer, though, Sir Solomon does, almost alarmingly jovial after all his airs of disapproval. “Paying attention does a young man credit, doesn't it, Miss Linnaeus? And surely he must have been paying a great deal of attention to you.”

Valira manages to end the song a verse early with something resembling grace, or at least she hopes so. “You would have to ask Major Ewhoza that, Sir Solomon.”

“Perhaps I shall,” he says, almost unbearably smug, and then gives her an imperious gesture. “Do play one more, dear Miss Linnaeus. Then I'll prevail on Mr. Zanaram-Bel to play.”

Frog looks long-suffering, but Valira feels no shame in picking a short song. Major Ewhoza retreats very quickly, and so Sir Solomon goes back to mostly ignoring her, which means everyone else does too, and Valira keeps mostly to herself for the remainder of the evening, and counts herself grateful to do so.

*

There's really no reason for her to see Major Ewhoza again for the length of her visit, as far as she's concerned, so of course she sees him the next afternoon. Frog and Mr. Bel have gone to make a call, and they invited her, but she's more interested in the garden, so it's there she's kneeling, pulling grass to expand a bed, when someone clears his throat on the other side of the garden hedge, and she looks up to find Major Ewhoza peering over it.

“My hosts are out, if you've come to call,” she blurts.

“I'd been walking by, and heard sounds in this garden. Not much has been done with it since Solomon inherited the estate.” She shades her eyes to look up at him, and he's peering at her, brows drawn together. “It's a pleasant surprise to see you here.”

Valira blinks at him. “In the garden?”

“On my uncle's estate. I had thought you might be on visiting terms with Mr. Zanaram-Bel, but I didn't think you'd be here for this visit.” Before Valira can respond, either to apologize for coming when she was also surprised or to ask why he's bothering to use the word “pleasant” when both of them know it's anything but that, he speaks again. “Your family is well? Safely through the winter?”

“They're well enough. Quil's been in Hylene for more than a month now, with a friend of our family.” She squints at him, looking for a hint of his feelings on that, but he doesn't show any. Of course. Whatever feelings Major Ewhoza has, he hides them well. “And the Windroses, and their family? I admit we worried when they left so suddenly. I hope they're well.”

“Also well.” She doesn't know what she's hoping for, but whatever it is, he doesn't show a flicker of it. “Business called them away.”

“Will they sell Fairpoint Hold, or leave it to some of Phi's other siblings? I wondered if it held too many bad memories for them, maybe.”

After a moment, he shakes his head. “I don't know. I haven't asked. I've been home with my cousin, mostly, for the last few months. If they plan to sell or to pass ownership, they haven't told me.”

Valira doesn't have much of a reply to that, and says something noncommittal, and she's relieved when he doesn't make his call official, merely a stop, and moves on. She goes back to the garden with relief, and pulls the grass with a little more vigor than before.

Not long after, Frog and Mr. Bel return, and Frog lingers in the garden when Mr. Bel excuses himself hastily, some problem in his current chapter teased out while they were out and in need of writing down. “We ran into Major Ewhoza on the road. Had he been by?”

“Just a quick stop. He didn't stay.”

“Surprised.” He taps his feet a few times, then kneels down next to her even if he's always been mostly useless in the garden. “There seems to be some interest there, if you ask me.”

Valira laughs. “In me? I think both of us would be happiest if we were never within twenty miles of each other again, and I'm just hoping that we're apart for the rest of this visit. As I'm sure he is too.”

Frog just grunts, and tries to help, and she lets him do it until he pulls a useful herb instead of grass and she shoos him away inside to clean up and change for dinner.

*

It's not, somehow, the last she sees of Ewhoza. Sir Solomon doesn't invite them to dinner again, but Ewhoza calls three times in ten days, and when Valira goes on walks through Sir Solomon's fields and orchards, she runs into him at least half the time, and while she can blame the calls on his overly strong sense of duty to his uncle's tenants, the meetings in the fields seem to surprise him as much as they do her.

“I hadn't thought you enjoyed outdoors walks so much,” she says when she runs into him watching the flocks of sheep Sir Solomon keeps, an arcane species, carnivorous, with wool of finest silk, a large part of what makes him so wealthy. “You didn't seem to spend much time on the grounds of Fairpoint Hold when we were both staying there.”

He shrugs. “I do like it, but more importantly, these are going to be Estara's lands someday, and she's still learning how to manage them. My uncle does it well enough, but if she's going to learn, she needs accurate reports of them.” He frowns out at the fields. “More of this could be farmland. He gives them land like regular sheep, but they don't need grazing land. And there might be more space for chickens and stocked ponds to feed them if he stopped pretending at that.”

“You're right that they don't need quite this much space for grazing, but they still need space to exercise,” she points out. “And he can't exactly rotate them with the cattle, a field appropriate for one wouldn't be very good for the others.”

“He could at least reduce the size,” he parries, and ten minutes later, Valira finds that she's embroiled in an argument about Sir Solomon's use of his land as regards his sheep, and that Major Ewhoza knows a lot more about the use of land and about animal husbandry than she was expecting him to.

Almost as soon as she realizes they're having a better conversation than they've managed to date, they lapse into an awkward silence, everything wrong between them rising up again, and it's not long before she excuses herself and hurries on her way, and he doesn't try to keep her. The next day, running into her in the orchard, he asks her opinion on the progress of the pruning of the apples, and then gives her a nod and lets her free again.

Even when she tries to avoid him she can't, and by the time two weeks have passed, she's seen him more days than not, and sometimes more than once in a day, when he decides to call after having seen her. She complains to Frog, and to Mr. Bel when Frog tends more to laughter than to sympathy, but both of them shrug and say that most likely he's just trying to befriend her, and perhaps it should give her hope for Quil's sake, though she suspects they're saying that more to placate her than for any other reason.

It gets to the point where she just sighs when she hears the rattle of a carriage outside one afternoon, expecting it to be Major Ewhoza's driving pair and his fashionable carriage. Frog laughs, and looks out the window, and then turns right around again. “Sir Solomon's come with Major Ewhoza and they're poking around the garden, we should go out.”

Of course Sir Solomon wants to inspect what she's been doing, and of course Major Ewhoza is with him. Valira's life couldn't be easy or convenient, of course. With a sigh that just makes Frog laugh again, she puts on a shawl against the mid-spring chill and goes out on her hosts' heels to greet their guests.

To her surprise, Sir Solomon seizes her arm immediately, leaving Major Ewhoza to be entertained by the other two, who take one look at Valira and show him to a water feature at the far end of the garden. “Miss Linnaeus, do show me what you've been doing,” Sir Solomon says as soon as the other three have been disposed of, and Valira sighs and sets to work.

“Of course.” She shows him the expanded beds, the ones she's rearranged, the varieties she's purchased seed for that suit the garden just a little better than the ones that had been there before. He nods along, but keeps throwing her sly glances, and she's not surprised when his next words to her aren't about the garden at all.

“Have you been enjoying your visit here? My nephew says he's seen you enjoying the grounds.”

Valira looks up from where she's kneeling to show him the garlic coming up. “Your grounds really are lovely, and you and my more immediate hosts have been so kind, I could only say good of this visit.”

“Good, good. And I'm pleased you and Haoti have been spending so much time together as well. He seems to appreciate it, and I'm sure you do as well.”

Valira thinks of Constance and her entreaties to keep her emotions hidden. She hopes that she does her proud, because she fears her wince might be showing through. At least Sir Solomon's hopeful smile doesn't waver. She wonders if she should tell him that his nephew isn't any more interested in her than she is in him, that they couldn't be more incompatible, but that feels cruel to an old man who may be pompous and proud but has been generous with her and with her friend. “It's been a pleasure to continue our acquaintance.”

“He's a very good acquaintance to have.” His smile stretches a little more, though she can't say it seems happy. More desperate. “And a better friend. He'd never brag, but I've coaxed him to tell me about his friends, and it seems that he recently kept two of them from making a very unwise match, and his modesty would have kept him from ever saying so.”

For a moment, all Valira can do is clench her hands in her lap, and she drops her gaze until she can look at the garlic and not at him, bonnet hiding her expression. Constance's lessons can't hold up to this. “And how did he do that?” she asks when she trusts her voice.

Sir Solomon, as a mercy, doesn't seem to realize she's ready to stand up and storm across the garden and shake Ewhoza until his teeth rattle. Who can he mean but the Windroses, and what unwise match can he mean but Quil? If Ewhoza is the one who parted them, then she can't begin to imagine what he could do for the pain he's caused her sister. She can't imagine what she could tell Quil, who she tries so hard not to keep secrets from but who can't be told this. “Oh, merely pointed out what an unwise match it was, I imagine, he wasn't specific on the details.”

“Did he say what was so unwise about the match?”

“Some objections to the lady's family, I gather, but again, he's too circumspect to tell his old uncle those details. Now. Was that not kind, to look after his friends' interests so well?”

Quil's family. Ewhoza looked at Valira, at her irrepressible little sisters, at Arfil, so wise but so vague and prone to odd commentary, to Constance, a widow with no standing, at all four of the children, two disowned and all of them living on Arfil's charity, and decided that Quil didn't deserve happiness. Valira buries her hands in the soil, and tries to draw strength instead of releasing the negative energy that wants to come out. She's never understood Quil's surges as well as she does now, when she feels like if she can't scream she needs to let the sound out in a blight that could kill the whole garden.

“Miss Linnaeus?” he asks, sounding worried. She's been quiet too long.

Valira stands and brushes her skirt off briskly, and keeps her face angled away until she thinks she's hidden the rage, stored it away for later. “My apologies, I was thinking about the situation. Very sad, of course.”

“Very. I'm only glad he could help where he could.”

Across the garden, Mr. Bel and Major Ewhoza, in both of their reserved ways, seem to be enjoying themselves. Even Frog is smiling, gesturing with both of their attention on him, talking about his fletching judging by the shape of the gestures. She could go to them now, scream in his face, release this energy on him and not on the garden she's worked so hard on, condemn him. She thinks of Quil's heartbreak, and then thinks of what Quil would say. That it's not worth it, that it won't help what's already been done. “He's very helpful indeed,” she says, and pulls on a smile, waits until it doesn't feel false before she turns to Sir Solomon again. He's smiling, that matchmaking fool, like he thinks he's impressed her. “Now, let me show you my plans for the herb garden.”

Somehow, she makes it through the rest of their visit without speaking to Major Ewhoza, and as soon as he's gone, she claims a headache and goes to her room for the afternoon, staring at a paper, wondering what she can possibly write to Quil, until she gives up with a headache in truth.

*

There's a knock on her door sometime before dinner. “Kalon and I are going for a walk,” Frog says softly through the door before even waiting for her answer. “If you think fresh air would help, you're welcome to join us.”

Fresh air would help, but being with people can't possibly. She doesn't know how she'd talk to anyone without talking about it, and has no idea how to explain it. “I'll come out for dinner,” she promises, and just a few seconds later, there's the sound of footsteps receding down the hall. Frog has always been good at taking her at her word.

Valira listens idly to the bustle of Frog and Mr. Bel leaving the house, and when they've gone, she puts on her warmest shawl even if it's too warm to justify it and goes to sit out in the garden, just to enjoy the plants, not to work for once. Her initial rage has passed, and she won't hurt the plants trying to help them now, but sometimes it's best to just sit and watch and listen, see how far she's come, the signs of plants thriving in front of her.

It's like meditation, in a way. Idilus tried to teach it to her in a sparsely decorated room with the windows closed, but she's always found the state easier to achieve outside, with the breeze ruffling her hair. She closes her eyes, tries not to think of what she's going to tell Quil, or Frog, or herself, and nearly startles out of her skin when she hears the creak of the garden gate.

It's Major Ewhoza. Of course it is. Valira stands to greet him, because she can't bear to be caught at a disadvantage. “My hosts are out,” she warns him, because she doesn't care to pull a maid away from her work to play chaperone right now.

“I've been thinking about it all day, and it's stupid not to just say it,” he says all in a rush, as though that follows from anything she said, and she has a good look at him, his hair in disarray, his cravat a mess though he's never showy with those anyway, his boots covered in dust like he's been pacing through the fields and roads since she saw him last. “There's no use concealing it, and when I hope it will lead to happy tidings, it's best just to—I love you, Miss Linnaeus. More than I thought possible on such a short acquaintance.”

Valira stares, and knows she's staring, and can't help it. “I beg your pardon?”

He shakes out his shoulders, and there's his reserved, cold mask again, despite his clear discomposure. He doesn't look like a man much in love, but he's not given to joking, either. “I know that it seems strange—the difference in our social statuses and families, just to begin, but I've found that I enjoy your company, and would like to have it always. In short, Miss Linnaeus, I'd like your hand in marriage. If you think it proper, I'll apply to your guardian and wait for your answer, but—”

“You can't be serious,” says Valira, and doesn't regret saying it even when it brings him up short. “You say you love me in one breath and bring up our social statuses in the next?”

“You can't deny they're different. You're a foundling, and disowned—your whole family would be a scandal if it weren't for your august guardian, and even he can't make you respectable. But I love you enough that it doesn't matter.”

“Clearly it does, or you wouldn't have brought it up,” she says, and the rage is back, the howling maelstrom of it inside her head, but this time, there's no risk of it flowing out at the plants. “You insult me like this and expect me to entertain this farce of a proposal?”

Ewhoza finally seems to realize how unhappy she is, his brows pinching into a frown. “I know I'm saying this clumsily, and I do apologize for that, but do me the kindness of not calling it a farce. My feelings are sincere, and so is my offer.”

“And yet it's a joke. Clumsy? You've insulted me and my family. And even if you hadn't, you can't possibly think I'd say yes to this.”

His expression is growing more forbidding by the second. “And what makes you say that?”

“How could I ever marry a man who made Quil as unhappy as she is?” He blinks, apparently shocked, and Valira doesn't let him collect himself enough to answer. “Your uncle told me, not knowing who he was speaking to, how you parted them, because Quil was _unsuitable_. If she wasn't good enough for your friends, how can I be good enough for you?”

“That isn't—”

“And even if you hadn't done that, when I know what kindness you show your old friends, how am I supposed to think you would treat me? Much less my family, who you have such disdain for?”

That elicits a scowl. “And what do you mean by that?”

“You cast Mr. Loz out without his promised living, left him to learn a trade on his own and broke your father's promises. If that doesn't speak to your character, I don't know what does.”

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

“And you can't dictate to me! You want an answer? Mr. Loz and Quil aside, I've disliked you from the night we met, and I would be so unhappy married to you that I can't even bear thinking of it. You're an arrogant prig, and cold, and I pity whoever is your wife someday, major, someone who hasn't seen the evils you've done to others even if you try to look like a good and pious man to the public. I have, though, and I have no use for you.” The anger has leeched out of his face, leaving him pale and shocked. No doubt no one has ever spoken to him like this. “I have nothing more to say.”

“Then I won't keep you,” he says, and there's a clipped sarcasm to the words, and a jerkiness to his mockery of a bow, his temper leashed but close to the surface. “You've made it very clear how you feel, and there's no reason to push the matter further. Good day, Miss Linnaeus.”

And then he's out the gate and up the lane, striding away at such a great pace that he disappears around the bend before she can get a full breath. She thinks about using it to send him on his way with a shout of something a lot less delicate, but she lets it out in a furious huff instead, and sits back down, staring at her garden beds, but there's no peace for her anymore, and her temples are throbbing with the headache she was mostly faking earlier.

“Good to see you up and about,” Mr. Bel says some time later. It could be a minute and it could be an hour, and she would have no way of knowing the difference. “We saw Major Ewhoza in the lane but he was in such a hurry he barely even nodded. I wondered if he'd been here.”

Valira looks up at them. They both seem contented, but worry is starting to spread across Frog's face, and Mr. Bel frowns when he meets her eyes. “He had,” she says. “Please excuse me, I'm not feeling well, and I don't think I'm going to eat dinner.”

Frog says her name, but Valira can't stop, not without crying, thoroughly miserable even when she feels like she should have some sense of satisfaction for finally telling Major Ewhoza what she thinks of him. She'll have to tell Frog what happened, she owes him that truth and matrimonial prize or not, he'll understand more than anyone why she said no, but tonight she can't talk to anyone else.

Once again, she finds herself staring at paper, wondering what she could write to Quil, but the words desert her completely, and she ends up at her desk until well past dark, and goes to bed in hopes of a dreamless sleep only to lay thrashing for most of the night.


	2. Chapter 2

Valira manages to tell Frog what happened the next morning, and knows he'll tell Mr. Bel, but she doesn't mind that. There's trust in their marriage, and she's not going to ask them to keep useless secrets out of her own sense of embarrassment. Besides, Mr. Bel is shockingly solicitous of her over breakfast and while they all sit quietly in the morning room before Frog drags her out to the garden to talk, even if his kindness comes in the form of asking her to check over his manuscript and see what she thinks of it.

When Frog is told, though, she excuses herself firmly to take a solitary walk. She needs to get out, to see a world bigger than the one she's been in, and Major Ewhoza will hardly seek her out after her dismissal of him, so she feels safe going to one of the sheep fields. They're used to her enough now that they'll come close, and she casts Speak With Animals and has a few delightful conversations with them that lift her spirits at least a little.

As she turns back, though, she sees a familiar figure coming down the lane. She thinks about ducking under a tree to hide, or even of casting a spell to make it easier, but she's not a coward, and from the purposeful way he's walking, he's already seen her.

Once he's in range, he gives a bow just as jerky as the one he left her with the day before and offers out a few sheets of paper sealed with wax, her name scrawled on the front. “I hoped to run into you again,” he says, brisk and measured. “I don't think you'll want to hear my explanations from my mouth, but I hope, even if it's not today or next week, you'll read this letter. It's—you made it clear what you think of my proposal. But you accused me of two things that I'd like to address, and some things are easier to write than say out loud.” He pauses, but Valira has nothing to say, and he bows again. “Goodbye, Miss Linnaeus. Despite yesterday, I wish you well. My visit in this region should only last a few more days and I've asked my uncle not to throw any more parties, so you shouldn't have my company forced on you again.”

With that, he turns back the way he came and starts walking fast enough to outpace her even if she wanted to keep up, which she certainly does not. Instead, she stands where she is and stares at the letter in her hand, his attempt at explanation. She wants to throw it into the fields with the sheep, to let it be ground into mud. She wants to never know what he said, doesn't want his words in her head.

But if she throws it away, she'll never know things that may help Quil. And while she's not serious about Mr. Loz no matter how many people tease her about him, if Ewhoza makes any admissions that will allow Mr. Loz to take him to court, she has an obligation to find them out, even if then she'll have to let someone read the letter instead of burning it once she's finished it.

If she waits to read it until she's safe in her room, she'll have to get through the gauntlet of concern awaiting her, and Frog will be nosy, and it's best, she decides, if she knows the worst before she goes in, so she finds a rock to sit on so her dress won't get too dirty, a little way away from the lane in case anyone comes along, and unfolds the letter. She gives herself a moment to look at the object, the even handwriting with drips of ink where he clearly had to stop to think, and then takes a breath and begins to read.

> Miss Linnaeus,
> 
> This isn't a renewal of my offer. You made your opinion on that quite clear, and I wish to be as clear: I said things in the worst possible way, but I do believe you that there isn't a way I could have said what I wanted to that would have allowed you to accept my hand. You should have no fear that the matter will come up in the letter after this. This is purely an answer to two accusations you leveled against me. I hope you'll at least read my explanation, though I don't ask for your forgiveness or your good opinion. Merely your attention, and your belief that I have no reason to lie to you.
> 
> The accusations were very different. One is true, but not much of a sin in my estimation. The other is false, but a worse thing to be accused of, and the true story isn't much prettier, for me or for anyone.
> 
> The easier one first, then. I think, for all it wasn't as bad, it's the one that matters most to you, and it's the one about Miss Myale and the Windroses. I did part them. And I won't pretend that part of the reason wasn't the scandal that could so easily brew around your family. Phi Windrose has been through enough in her life, and she and her brothers have had to fight for society's approval, and only won it due to money. She and Terry are kind and loving and would never blame a partner for damaging that hard-won approval, but I couldn't bear to see them jeopardize it. But even that wouldn't have mattered if I thought you sister actually cared for them as much as they did for her. You say I ruined her happiness. I say that whenever I saw her with them, she was blushing, ducking away, trying to turn away their affection. She seemed to be more overwhelmed and flattered than in love. I could be wrong—you know her much more than I do, of course—but I wouldn't take that risk.
> 
> Whatever blame you assign to me, please don't include the Windroses in it. I barely had to say what I wrote above, and they very properly didn't want to overwhelm a young lady or make her feel that she owed them something. They've been nothing but honorable, and they've thought of nothing but Miss Myale's happiness in this, their own a distant second. I mentioned it once and we never spoke of it again. I can't deny I was happy when they decided to leave, but I hope I didn't influence them unduly, merely pointed out what I would like any friend to point out to me. What I wish, in fact, a friend could have pointed out to me, if I'd had one here to discuss you with.
> 
> But I promised no discussion of that, and there's a worse accusation to come, and a worse story, because you deserve the whole truth from me, and I've told it to no one in my life.
> 
> I grew up with Mr. Frank Loz. He was the son of an old battle companion of my father's, and my father raised him from the age of seven, when his father passed away. To my father's disappointment, he had little talent for games of war, but he was always a religious child, and his faith grew until my father settled on giving him clericship of the local temple. He didn't mind so much, since I'd already set my heart on being a paladin. He thought the pair of us would protect the old fort well. Frank and I weren't friends, exactly, but we were used to each other, and it didn't seem a bad future.
> 
> A year before my father died, I was on assignment in the army, sent in to deal with a nest of minor demons. They were protecting a greater one, though we didn't know it at the time, one capable of possession, and I was the only one nearby who it decided made a palatable meal.
> 
> I won't describe what followed. It was a horror, and that I survived it is a miracle, and mostly thanks to Phi and Terry, though even they didn't know quite what was wrong. When I was summoned home for my father's death, I was almost gone, and the demon was musing about what would make a pleasant next meal, now that it had learned so much from me.
> 
> When I arrived, my cousin Estara Denrathy was already there, orphaned sometime in that long year, a ward of the estate—my ward. I hardly knew her name, but she saw something was wrong with me, and called on her own god, and called for Frank Loz as well, who was in daily expectation of taking the temple seat, only needing a few more tests to be proven worthy of moving from acolyte to full cleric, as well as needing my confirmation as the new master of the estate. The demon was intrigued by the sound of both of them, but Star was young, and so connected with her god, the well of power right there with it when Frank had yet to arrive—it would have taken her in an instant.
> 
> And I made a bargain. Not one I'm proud of, but it's done now. If it didn't take Star, then or ever, I wouldn't fight it taking and keeping its next target. I suppose I thought it would go off to some stranger, stupidly. Instead, when Frank walked into the room, it moved, and I was free, and he was gone. When there's a demon in your head, it's a struggle at first, which one of you wins. I'd been through enough battles that I could fight it into being a presence, but not overwhelming me completely.
> 
> Frank had only had safe training. He'd never had to fight a battle in his mind, and he lost almost immediately. As far as I can tell, the man I knew as Frank Loz died that day, and the demon has been walking around in his body since. And I've found that any time I tried to speak to someone who could do something about it, I couldn't say anything—I said I wouldn't prevent it from keeping the body, and it left enough marks on me to ensure it. I suspect I can only tell you because I'm telling you to clear my name and not to ask for help with the problem. Or because I'm telling myself you'll keep it secret.
> 
> Please, if you believe nothing else: Frank Loz is a dangerous man. He's not a man at all. And a body can only live so long without its soul inside it, even if it's occupied. I think it's looking for another host, and that it might have an eye on you, with your power. It might have already been feeding to try to make its body live just a little longer. Avoid it if you can. Hate me if it helps you, for my proposal or for your sister's happiness, but keep well away from him.
> 
> You won't, I hope, be burdened with my company again. I'll be leaving in a matter of days, and I'll keep my visits with the Windroses to Hylene as much as possible.
> 
> Yours,  
> Haoti Ewhoza

“It can't be true,” Valira says out loud, because maybe if she says it, she'll believe it. Surely if he were lying he would have been kinder to himself, would have made himself look like a hero instead of a victim and at worst a coward. Even if it's not true, though, she's certain he believes it, and there's a certain honor she can respect him for in that honesty, even if the rest of it doesn't make her like him.

If Mr. Loz is a demon—well, she can't blame Ewhoza for sending him away, and can't blame him for a bargain desperately made that doesn't let him have that demon hunted down. He's told Valira now, and now the question becomes a matter of her honor and her ability to deal with it, if he can't. She won't trust the information to a letter, but when she's home, Arfil or Kithri should be able to solve the problem easily.

And if it's true, then Valira owes Ewhoza an apology, for liking someone simply because he and Ewhoza disliked each other. She still isn't sure if she can forgive him for making Quil's life his business to meddle in, but she can admit that she's made a mistake where Mr. Loz is concerned, and that considering how exhausted she usually is after seeing Mr. Loz, Major Ewhoza might well have saved her life and her soul.

Apologizing, though, means seeing him again, another stiff encounter when she still has no fondness for him and he's still smarting with embarrassment after her rejection. The best apology, she decides, folding up the letter and stowing it away, is her silence, and her dealing with the problem of Mr. Loz for him as best she can.

*

After some time to collect herself, she returns to the dower house, where Mr. Bel is conspicuously absent and Frog is in the sitting room with tea and scones set out and a pained look on his face. “Sit down,” he says. “I thought maybe after your walk you'd be able to talk about it more.”

Frog and Mr. Bel won't be able to do anything about Mr. Loz, and she owes it to Major Ewhoza not to gossip, to use his information to solve the problem and not to pour out her woes. “I ran into him out there, so I don't know how much calmer I am today,” she admits, since she'll happily talk about what he did to Quil all afternoon if Frog lets her.

He pours her some tea. “Did you say yes this time?”

“He didn't ask, and no.” Valira frowns at him, but he's not meeting her eyes. “Do you think I should have? Really?”

“I think he has ten thousand a year and a beautiful estate, and that no doubt obligations will take him away often enough that you could probably bear it. Especially if it got you access to the Windroses and could send them back to Quil.”

“He did part them. He told me so, and told me why.” She clenches her fists in her lap, and Frog puts the tea down in front of her instead of waiting for her to reach out and take it. “He says, if you'll believe it, that he thought she was more overwhelmed by them than interested.”

“Quil is given to maidenly blushing instead of telling people things straight out,” Frog points out. “While you can call the major a hypocrite when she wasn't the only shy one judging by his behavior with you, you can't say he's completely wrong.” Valira stares at him, feeling more betrayed than she really should by the whole conversation, and he sighs. “I've seen her blush and retreat for years from anyone interested. Worried about her surges, and all. Of course she did it with the Windroses too.”

“It still wasn't his business.”

“That I don't dispute.” He puts a scone in front of her too, and Valira finally forces herself to move and take a few sips of tea, brewed the way only a friend can brew it, perfectly to her taste. “You still haven't answered my question. If Quil's happiness is your only object, you could have said yes to him and reunited them.”

Valira can't talk about her ideals for marriage with Frog, when she so recently offended him wondering why he would take Mr. Bel's offer, so she only manages a few words. “Quil's happiness isn't my only object.”

“And you wouldn't be happy with a beautiful estate to tend to? Perhaps some children someday, and a husband likely to be uninvolved?”

It's an easy future to paint, even if she doesn't know what Belvale looks like. She wasn't raised to household management like many are, but she's learned estate management through sheer stubborn will, and she likes the thought of using it, having a place of her own, one that can't be taken from her when Arfil dies, one that doesn't depend on the charity of a sister. That part of her life would be happy enough. But when the children, and the getting of them, comes to mind, she stops. “Even if I could bear marrying someone I don't love, I can't stand the thought of marrying someone who would despise me a lot longer than he claimed to love me.” She takes another sip of tea to collect her thoughts. “The way he talked about me, about my family—he would have resented me. And that I can't stand, whether he's right about Quil or not.”

“As long as you're sure,” says Frog, and with more mercy than usual, changes the subject.

*

Two days later, Mr. Bel tries very hard to casually tell them that Major Ewhoza was called to town on business, cutting his visit nearly a week short, and Valira is grateful not to have to worry about apologizing, and even more grateful to Mr. Bel for, in his awkward way, letting her know that it's safe to go on rambles again without worrying about running into him.

It's only another day before Sir Solomon stops by, and mostly ignores Mr. Bel despite the excuse of a letter from their publisher in order to pin Valira with a look. “I apologize for not bringing my nephew with me. He was called away suddenly.”

“I hope all is well with him,” Valira says, and hopes she sounds gracious and not grudging. “But your presence is enough of an honor.”

“Yes, yes, just some business. But I know you young people all like to spend time together.”

“You'll have to pass our greetings on the next time you write him,” Frog says, intervening, and no matter how many times Sir Solomon tries to prod, looking for whatever his nephew wouldn't tell him, Frog and Mr. Bel try to keep Valira from answering.

By the time Sir Solomon leaves, Valira is exhausted, and excuses herself out to the garden, which always helps, and where her work is nearly finished. She only has a week left in her visit herself. Quil wrote, inviting her to spend a few days in Hylene and attend one last party with her before returning home until Valira's travels with Kithri begin, and Valira, much as she loves Frog, misses her family and her home and her own garden. Cutting the visit off, especially when it's been so strange, won't break her heart.

She's expecting some company before she's done in the garden, but she's not expecting it to be Mr. Bel, who watches her for a few moments before joining in with thinning out a row of flowers seeded a little too enthusiastically. “I fear you haven't had a restful visit in my house,” he says at last.

“No,” she says, and looks up warily. “But it's still been good to visit Frog.”

“I'm glad. I know he misses you. Everyone in his old home, but you in particular.” He works in silence for a moment. “I owe you my thanks, I think.”

Valira frowns when he doesn't elaborate. “I can't think for what. You've been kind since I arrived—a consummate host, in fact. And after how difficult things were after our last real conversation ...”

“That's what I have to thank you for. Saying no.” She has no idea what her face looks like, but a faint smile crosses his, at whatever he sees there. “I would have done my duty. It's … it means a great deal to me that I have more than duty. That the next match I sought is one that suits me so well.” Before Valira can respond to that extraordinary statement, he shakes his head. “I don't mean to get sentimental. But I did want to thank you. And to tell you … I understand your rejection a lot better than I did a few months ago. And if Major Ewhoza really isn't the match for you, don't let Frog's worries about you convince you otherwise.”

“I wouldn't,” she says, and finds that she's reassuring him instead of rolling her eyes, startled enough by his honesty to give her own in return. “And he's not. He—he didn't apologize, exactly. But he explained a few things. Some helped, and some didn't.”

“Good. I feared he'd done you lasting harm, and he's my landlord's nephew, I couldn't have called him out if he had.”

“Nobody really duels in the surface world these days anyway,” she tells him, distantly amused.

His smile this time is less faint. “So Frog told me, after you explained what happened. Still, I'm glad he provided explanations.” They work in companionable silence for a few moments. “I'd wondered about him,” he says at last. “Sir Solomon spoke of him as a reprobate, too much his father's son, but he didn't seem that way to me. He seems to have come to some kind of grief, I think.”

Valira remembers the exhaustion like grey fog in her head whenever she speaks to Mr. Loz, and wonders how much worse the fog is when the demon is inside, carving out a hole for itself. Even once it was gone, it would leave scars. “You're not wrong,” she finally says. “Thank you for reminding me of that, Mr. Bel. I don't have to like him, but I can still sympathize.”

“You can,” he agrees, and offers her a smile. “And I think, after all this time, I should invite you to call me Kalon.”

Valira smiles in return, relieved and pleased. “I think I will, if you call me Valira. We ought to have been doing it long since, and Frog will tell us so.”

He does, when they go inside and make a point of exchanging names over dinner, but he says it fondly, and the atmosphere over dinner that night is much more pleasant than it's been before.

*

The day she leaves for Hylene is the first truly hot day of the year, the dew cooking off the grass as she watches, after being waved off on the stagecoach not long after dawn, Frog and Kalon yawning companionably together. Valira spends the day hot and uncomfortable, wishing she could be outside, where she could enjoy the sun and the heat.

Hylene isn't much of an improvement on the stagecoach, when she arrives, the city so much hotter than the surrounding countryside, and with the ripe smell that can never quite be avoided in a city on hot days, even with a coastal breeze to help. By the time the horses draw to a stop outside Quil and Kithri's lodgings, Valira is grumpy and bedraggled and prepared to take to her bed without bothering to stop for a gossip.

Quil is waiting on the steps again, though, arms open as soon as Valira's been handed down and abandoned with her luggage, and Valira doesn't have the heart, or really the desire, to shove past her, so she lets herself be hugged and fussed over. Kithri comes out a moment later, takes one look at her, and chivvies her inside and into a lukewarm bath that feels just right to wash the day away while the staff takes charge of her luggage.

Almost as soon as she emerges, while she's still combing the tangles out of her hair and dripping onto her dressing gown, Quil comes in and sits expectantly on the bed, a little frown on her face. “There was something you weren't telling me in those last few letters you sent. You should tell me now.” The frown deepens. “If you can. Did Mr. Bel do something untoward? Or did Major Ewhoza bother you?”

“Mr. Bel was a perfect gentleman, I actually like him now.” Valira sighs and sits on the bed with Quil. Telling her about what sent the Windroses away is nothing but cruel. She'll be mortified and full of self-blame, and what could she do? Write a letter professing her love, perhaps, but that's not Quil's kind of bravery. “Major Ewhoza … that's a different story.”

“Tell me,” says Quil, and after a breath to gather her wits, Valira does, tells the story of the proposal that came out of nowhere to shock her and her reaction, and then the letter. She can feel the pause where Quil expects her to produce it, but when she doesn't, Quil moves on. “A demon,” she says wonderingly when Valira falls silent. “It seems impossible. Shouldn't Idilus have noticed? Or Arfil?”

“He always seemed to avoid Arfil, but I don't know about Idilus.” Valira sighs. “Maybe Major Ewhoza was lying, but it's a horrible thing to lie about. I think we have to assume Mr. Loz is a demon, and work from there.”

Quil puts an arm around her shoulders. “I'm shocked you trust him that far, after the way he proposed to you.”

“I might not like him, but I don't think he's a liar. I appreciate his advice and just hope I'll never have to see him again.” Quil looks like she wants to comment on that, and Valira speaks before she can. “But we'll have plenty of time to talk about that. I want you to tell me about Hylene. Any callers for your attention?”

“No. I … I saw them, last week. I decided telling you about it could wait until I saw you, since the time was so close.” Quil wilts a little, which gives Valira enough of an answer about how that went before she elaborates. “We were all walking in the park at the same time, so we had to stop. It was … difficult, though of course they were perfectly polite. And now maybe the worst of it is over and we'll just be neighbors the next time we happen to meet. If we happen to meet.”

Valira believes that about as much as Quil believes that there's no more to the story of Major Ewhoza's proposal, but it's a stalemate she doesn't want to break, so she changes the subject to the party they'll be attending with Kithri, and suspects they're both grateful for it.

Three days pass quickly, with a busy city to explore and with Quil at her side again. Quil and Kithri take her to parks and public gardens, to the milliner's and the dressmaker's and a great deal of other shopping that's fun for a few minutes but then gets tedious. Valira attends Kithri's party, and dances with several eligible people who seem to mostly be doing it for Kithri's sake, or perhaps to impress Quil, hoping for one more try for her favor before she leaves town.

Valira watches Quil with them, watches the way she deals with them as she always does at home, with absent smiles, seeming to have no idea how focused their interest is. She tries to look as Major Ewhoza or the Windroses might have looked, trying to decode her attention and affection. Quil's so polite to everyone, so friendly and kind, and when someone's a little too forward, she does blush and duck her head—Valira knows her better than almost anyone in the world, she can see the differences, a hundred of them, between Quil's behavior with her town suitors and her behavior with the Windroses, but to someone who knows her less, maybe it would be possible to miss it. Ewhoza still should have looked closer before he interfered, but if he was already inclined to think badly of her family connections, it would be easy to make assumptions.

“You look serious,” says Kithri when she finds her at the side of the dance floor. “Now's not a bad time to meet some new people. If you make a particular friend, I could be convinced to bring you back here for the summer instead of taking you touring.”

“Don't you dare, I'm very much looking forward to seeing more of the countryside.” Valira sighs and looks at Kithri. She's a cleric, and she'll have a few things to say on the subject of demons. “I have a few things to talk to you about on the way back home. There's a situation we may need to take care of.”

Kithri's gaze immediately goes steel-hard. “If someone's importuned you, I'll—”

“No, nothing like that. Some information about Mr. Loz came to light, and I need you and Arfil and Idilus all to know about it, if it's true.”

“Of course you tell me so at a party,” says Kithri with a snort, and gives her a bracing pat on the elbow, not being able to easily reach her shoulder. “We'll talk about it. Whatever the problem is, the three of us can take care of it.”

Valira doesn't care whether the other two in the three are Arfil and Idilus or her and Quil, but either way she feels warm, and relieved, and like she can enjoy the rest of her night and the rest of her visit to Hylene, before they all pack up their luggage and get into Kithri's carriage to go home.

*

Valira feels like she's mobbed by people as soon as she gets out of the carriage in front of her house. Trilli grabs her first, talking at a speed that only a girl of her age and enthusiasm can manage, a rush of words about Idilus's students and Valira's letters and how bored she's been without their company. Nearby, Constance and Cordelia are fussing over Quil, while Kithri, who's been looking grim since Valira spilled the news about Mr. Loz, takes Arfil aside for a low-voiced talk.

The next half hour is pleasant chaos as only home can provide. Constance exclaims over Valira's new crop of freckles, Cordelia complains loudly about getting her sisters back only to be losing most of the interesting dance partners, Trilli wants to share every song she's even thought about writing since they've been gone, and Arfil kisses them both on the cheek and goes back to talking to Kithri, which the girls complain about and which seems to alarm Constance.

While Quil is engaged telling the girls about, it seems, every single party she attended, who she danced with, and what she wore at each one, Kithri slips into the sitting room, and Arfil appears in the door, catches Valira's eye, and jerks his head out into the hallway.

“I've Sent to Idilus,” he begins, brisk and worried. “It's hard to find the signs of demon possession like the kind you say Major Ewhoza described without another demon doing the searching for it, but he deserves to know about our worries. He says Loz is out for the day working on some experiments in private, but he'll do his best when he returns to find him out without letting him know we suspect him. I may go there tomorrow to do something similar, though you're right that he avoids me. Kithri is staying a day or two, and she's our best hope of Banishing him, so we'll have to hope we can get confirmation before obligations take her elsewhere.”

“I feel like I should have known,” she admits. “I was always so tired after I saw him, or danced with him. He always made a habit of touching skin-to-skin, but I thought it was just flirting, and that I was exhausted for some other reason.”

Arfil shakes his head. “Demons are clever. If even Idilus didn't notice, not to mention the two masters who had supervision of him before this, how could you be expected to?”

“He was taking parts of me. If not my soul, my energy. I should have recognized that.”

“I never taught you to. I hoped the time of demons was past, but it seems it isn't, not really. And if that's the case, I'll have to teach all four of you some lessons. And Constance too.”

Valira frowns, thinking of Trilli and Cordelia, how young they both are, given the childhoods she and Quil didn't really have, their honest delight in Idilus's students, their hard-won trust in the world. “Teach us, we'll all be grateful for it, but can we keep this away from the girls as much as possible? They should know to be wary, but I don't want them frightened and thinking any new acquaintance might be an enemy.”

Arfil, for all he's vague and absent-minded and sometimes incomprehensible when he's in the middle of a new theory, can be insightful when he wants to be, and his eyes soften. “I'll discuss it with Constance and Kithri and Idilus, but Idilus may want to not let his apprentices know what near danger they've been in, if it comes to that, at least not yet.”

“If he is a demon, he was very complacent, coming to a town with the two greatest mages in the country.”

“You think there's a chance he's not?”

Valira thinks of the letter again, Major Ewhoza's stiff insistence on making sure she knew, so she could be protected. “No. Not really.”

Arfil squeezes her shoulder. “Thank you for telling us. We'll take care of it as best we can. Now, the girls will be missing you, so I won't keep you.”

Valira smiles at him and goes back to the girls and even manages to forget a little bit about Mr. Loz during Trilli and Cordelia's theatrical despair at the mastery students leaving. In fairness to Cordelia, her despair seems just as much because she and Mrs. Starsinger, the wife of the only bardic mastery student, have become dear friends, though the loss of dance partners also seems to be cutting her deeply.

Even when they're complaining, it's a delight to see the girls again, to ask them questions and answer theirs, and Valira concentrates on that, and not on the contents of Major Ewhoza's letter, even if there's an undercurrent of worry from Arfil and Constance and Kithri for the whole afternoon.

*

When her household has calmed a little, Valira goes out walking alone in her beloved gardens and forests. Constance and the girls, with help from the servants, have given her garden a good beginning, without much that needs her magical touch, and she's glad to range out into their forests, where the undergrowth is getting a little thick, too many trees competing for limited light, and the fields, not supporting sheep like on Sir Solomon's estate, just grasses almost tall enough to sway and the very first buds of flowers.

It's a nasty shock when she turns a corner on one of the trails she often uses to take to Idilus's school and finds Mr. Loz coming in the other direction. He breaks into a smile when he sees her, and she remembers her charming dancing partner, his interest in her magic, his interest in her family. “Miss Linnaeus, I did not know you were back or I'd be coming to call on you!”

“I only just arrived, and wanted to see how spring is hitting the land. I'm sure I would have seen you eventually.” She wishes she knew some kind of magic to find him out, learn one way or the other, but all she has is words, and her own powers of observation. “How do your studies proceed?”

“Well enough. And your visit to Noreneshire?”

“As you say, well enough. It was good to see Mr. Bel and Mr. Zanaram-Bel again, and to meet Sir Solomon.” She smiles as sincerely as she can. “Though I admit the society was dampened a little by the presence of Major Ewhoza visiting his kinsman.”

“I do hope I haven't poisoned you against him,” he says, his eyebrows raised in what looks like genuine concern. It would be so easy to convince herself that there's no harm in him, that Ewhoza is lying or mad or playing some game, but Valira can't do it.

“I make my own opinions,” she says, and knows that normally she would say more. She has to keep talking, if he's to believe that she doesn't suspect him, but she doesn't know what to say. “And I have no reason to be fond of the major.”

“I have to admit I'm relieved to hear it. If you'd cared to ask, no doubt he'd say almost anything about me to try to seem justified in what he did.”

“What reason would I have to ask? No, Mr. Loz, whatever went on between the two of you, it's your business.”

He smiles, all charm. “As long as you don't think the worse of me. I couldn't bear that.”

“Again, there's no reason for that, so I suppose you'll get through just fine after all.”

Valira thinks she's keeping her voice even, but his smile slips, and suddenly there's something intent on his face, a focus she's not used to from him, without a hint of flirtation. “I don't think you're being perfectly honest with me, Miss Linnaeus.” Before she can move, he takes her hand, and now that she knows what he is, she can feel the energy leave her, feel it like she's worn out all her day's supply of magic at once, and when he lets her go, his smile is different, terrifying. “How disappointing, Valira. Of course you'd listen to that useless whiner.”

“He stood up to you for a year, I'd say he had some use,” she says, now that there's no use in lying. She expects to be overwhelmed immediately, used the way Ewhoza was used, or worse, erased the way the true Mr. Loz was. “Stay away from me, and stay away from my family.”

He laughs. “Or what? What kind of threat can you, of all people, visit on me? You may know powerful people, but they'll have to find me first.”

Between one blink and the next, before she can muster up something appropriately blistering to say, words that might well be her last, he's gone. He shouldn't be powerful enough to disappear so completely, but then again, he's not a student at all, and she doesn't know what kind of demon he is, how much magic he has at his disposal. She's left staring into the air, so exhausted she wonders if she can make it home, and she lets out a shout of frustration so intense that she has to sit down before she can stumble that way.

Constance, luckily, sees her before any of her sisters do, and Constance immediately puts an arm around her. “What on earth is the matter, Valira? What happened out there? I'll get Kithri, you just sit here in the garden.”

“Kithri, yes. Please. And Arfil, if you can. It's about Mr. Loz.”

Constance goes grim, and clasps Valira's hand. “I won't make you say it twice. You can tell all of us at once.”

Valira sits on the garden bench, listening to the bustle inside, Constance's voice at an open window brightly telling the girls they should ask to see Quil's town wardrobe, getting rid of all of them for the moment, though she'll have to tell Quil later. When she comes back with Kithri and Arfil in tow, Constance sits on the bench next to Valira and takes her hand again, and Valira turns to the other two. “He's a demon, and he knows we know.”

They ask her about it, and Valira manages to tell them without collapsing, helped along by Kithri's magic to bolster her. When it's done, all of them look at each other, unhappy and angry with nowhere to put it. “I know people who can track demons more easily than we can,” says Kithri. “I'll direct my travels to them. There are authorities who can handle Mr. Loz, and find his name so he can be Banished.”

“And I'm sure he's fled, but I'll let Idilus know to watch out, and to warn his fellow masters,” Arfil assures her. “He probably is on the run, now, and won't come anywhere near anyone who might know what he is and have the power to eject him, so he won't bother any of us again, but we'll keep an eye out, and make sure the problem is being dealt with.”

Constance looks at the other two. “I think, if he's gone and not likely to come back, we should keep it from the girls for now. The gods know Trilli would try to track him down and do something unwise, and Cordelia wouldn't be much better.”

Valira looks around at all of them, her guardians, taking the burden of a threat so wholly off her shoulders that she feels a little dizzy with the loss, thinking of the last time there was a threat and she tried to seek help from the people who took care of her. “I'll tell Quil,” she says, “but you're right about the other two, I was already thinking they shouldn't know.”

“It won't touch us,” Constance assures her, and if it sounds more like a wish than a truth, all four of them ignore it.

*

Kithri leaves the next day, promising Valira that she'll return after Midsummer to take her on the promised trip and with a sense of purpose that makes Valira think that Mr. Loz is her first order of business.

The normalcy of everything, despite that hanging over their heads, makes Valira restless and nervous as she tries to settle back in at home, and she thinks Quil feels much the same, though she's a lot more patient with the girls and their complaining about being abandoned by the mastery students than Valira is, especially when a repeated complaint is that Mr. Loz left early without telling anyone, the story that's circulating around town and that Arfil and Idilus think it wisest not to correct so far.

Valira has gotten so used to them complaining that it's almost a jolt to see Cordelia come home from a surly walk to town with her eyes and her spirits bright. Trilli, who was so surly that she declined when Constance asked if she wanted to come to town, abandons her music practice immediately, sensing a change in the air. Valira, trying to work on a botanical drawing, sighs and puts it to the side. “What's the news?” Valira asks, looking for Constance, whose expression reads as concerned and pleased all at once, not uncommon when the girls are into some scheme.

“Mrs. Starsinger invited me to come with them to their next stop for a few weeks,” says Cordelia, with a grin around the room, pleased to be asked. “She says going to a new place is always a trial, especially when she has to be put in lodgings away from Sirius, and that she wants me to help ease the transition. And Mama says that if Arfil allows it I may!”

Valira looks at Constance, startled, while Trilli shoots to her feet. “Both of us?” she asks, her heart in her voice.

Cordelia ducks her head, suddenly looking anywhere but at Trilli, and Valira winces in anticipation of the news to follow. “She can't put up more than one, in lodgings the size of the ones she stays in, or I'm sure she would! But I'll write every day, you know I will.”

Trilli's face goes red with temper only a second before she turns to appeal to Constance and Valira, and Valira envies Quil the walk she took to look after her beehives. “She's hardly older than me! If she goes, I should be allowed, it's not fair otherwise.”

“You didn't receive the invitation, darling,” Constance says, at her most soothing.

Valira frowns around the room, and turns her attention to Constance. “I'm not so sure either of them going is a good idea. Things could be dangerous.”

Constance starts to say something conciliatory in time for both of the girls to turn on Valira. Trilli, as she so often does, beats Cordelia to speaking. “Don't you start in about danger! You were younger than I am when you—”

Trilli stops, and Valira can at least be grateful that she lets Valira say it instead of her. “Killed a brigand who threatened you and the other children, yes. Which is how I know things are dangerous out there. It was sheer luck that I managed it.”

There's an awkward silence, the kind Valira hates, in the wake of that. Cordelia is still vibrating with excitement, and Trilli's outrage hasn't subsided even if she does feel a little sorry bringing up Valira's past, but neither of them makes it across the barrier to start their arguments again. Constance, with a look full of concern for Valira, takes advantage of the moment to intervene. “They'll be traveling under magical protection, and living under it too,” she says, as gentle as ever. “But as I told you, Cordelia Myale, don't get your hopes up until Arfil has told you that you can go, because he knows more about the defenses than I possibly could.”

Cordelia turns to start complaining that there's no reason at all for there to be danger, and Valira slips away to find Arfil in his study before anyone else can think to do so.

When she knocks, he asks her to come in right away, and she pushes the door open, ready as one always must be on entering Arfil's study to duck or run if she destabilizes something. Luckily, this time, he's sitting in front of a stack of books, nothing glowing or bubbling or otherwise likely to explode, and he looks up to smile at her. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“Cordelia's been invited to go with the mastery students to their next stop and stay with Mrs. Starsinger.”

“I'm sure Trilli is thrilled,” he says, just dry enough that she knows he's amused.

Valira offers him a thin smile and then shakes her head. “That's not what I'm most worried about. I'm worried that Mr. Loz might decide to show up again, and Cordelia doesn't have magic the way the rest of us do. Who's to say she could defend herself? We should be keeping her safe, or warning her, or something.”

“She will be safe,” he assures her, with so much more attention than usual that she has to listen. “All the teachers in our mastery network know that Mr. Loz is no longer welcome and why, and they'll have set wards. I'll tell her to be careful, and keep her wits about her, but when else will she have such a convenient invitation?”

“Kithri will take her to Hylene someday, she's happy to do it for all of us, I know.”

“But she doesn't want Hylene someday, she wants this trip now.” Arfil smiles at her. “Cordelia's had a hard life—you all have, but she especially was defenseless against something much greater than herself. If she wants to go and flirt with the mastery students a little longer, who am I to stop her? I trust the mages in this network, and so does Idilus. I'm just glad she's finally made a friend outside the household, even if Trilli is going to be impossible to be around while she's gone.”

Trilli is, but Valira is still worried about Cordelia, young and giddy and just wanting dance partners, with her only chaperone a woman little more mature than she is, even if her elvish heritage means that in years she's a great deal older. “It's not that I don't trust them, or even her. But Mr. Loz could have taken me when I saw him, and he didn't, and that doesn't feel right to me.”

“Nor me, but even greater demons have had to be good at surviving, to last into this age. He's smart enough to stay hidden, which means he won't risk overlapping acquaintances. We need to search for him still, but as a public service, not as fear of a personal vendetta.”

Before Valira can say that she knows that's the reasonable answer but she's still nervous, there's another knock on the door, and when Arfil calls for them to come in, the girls tumble in, nearly tripping over each other and definitely talking over each other, with Constance coming in behind them. No matter the objections, Arfil and Constance between them decide that Cordelia is going to stay with Mrs. Starsinger, and that, despite Valira's nervousness and Quil's obvious dislike of the idea, is that.

*

It's only a few days before Cordelia leaves, and the rest of them settle into some kind of routine. Trilli sulks the weeks away, though Cordelia's frequent and lengthy letters to her seem to brighten her up some, though she won't let anyone else read them. The next master assures Arfil and Idilus that there's been no sign of Mr. Loz or anyone else with a demon inside them on her estate or in her area, and Valira has to content herself with that. She sets herself to dealing with her garden and to entertaining Trilli as best she can, with Quil's help. There are a few parties to attend, but not many, with the summer heat making the usual assembly rooms too stuffy to bear, and Valira is chafing for something to do within a week.

It wouldn't be so bad if she didn't have the promise of a trip with Kithri ahead of her, something happy to look forward to, but as it is, she's restless and that doesn't help Trilli's restlessness, and Quil is still pretending not to be heartbroken. Arfil, with all three of them unhappy, wisely disappears up to his study with an experiment, and Constance is left dealing with all of them.

“Letter for you from Kithri,” she says with undisguised relief one afternoon, passing it to Valira as she speaks, keeping a few letters in her hands—one much slimmer than the other, and both addressed in Cordelia's handwriting. “And one from Cordelia for Trilli and one for the rest of us, when you're finished with that one. I'm going to let the other girls know, I'm sure Arfil will read it on his own later.”

Valira opens the letter to find a sketch of an itinerary and an apology for needing to put the trip off an extra week and curtail the itinerary a little, since her search for Mr. Loz is fruitless and taking longer than she means it to. The delay is a disappointment, but the itinerary isn't, sketched out on a vague map with some of their stops labeled, and other points of interest too. Kithri's chosen places that are famously beautiful, with old growth forests not yet cut for timber or with ornamental gardens she's read about in books.

The only thing that mars it is the star by Belvale Park that proves it's on their list of stops. Valira has no desire to see Major Ewhoza's home, and hasn't heard anything about its gardens or grounds that makes it seem worthy of attention. She's about to complain to Quil about it, as she enters the room, when she realizes that it might be part of Kithri's search for the demon. It would make sense to go looking for the place it chose this body, and for its last host.

“Is that your route?” Quil asks, coming closer with a smile. “It looks like you'll see plenty of sights.”

“I certainly will,” says Valira, and discreetly points out the point of interest on her map as Constance and Trilli come in, Trilli trying to snatch for her letter and being steered to a seat instead. Quil makes a sympathetic face, and they leave off there to listen to another letter from Cordelia talking about society and parties and who she went walking with last. Trilli is smirking in a way that means Cordelia is probably keeping secrets, but they're that age, she tells herself. Probably Cordelia's chosen a favorite, and has been updating Trilli on all her flirts, and anyone older just won't understand them.

Quil just smiles fondly, shaking her head, and if she's not worried, when she's so protective of Cordelia it's a miracle she didn't try to stow away in her bag, Valira has no reason to be either, and she tries to be amused instead of concerned and even mostly succeeds.

*

Kithri arrives in the rain and spends a night, most of it shut away with Arfil in his study, before taking Valira away the next morning.

It's been a long time since Valira traveled much by carriage. Her visit to Frog and Kalon was the longest time she'd traveled in years, if not as far from home as she's been—Arfil sometimes takes it in his head to take them to the sea, or the deep woods, or a city somewhere different entirely, to explore while he does whatever errand he deemed necessary. She likes that, being dropped in a new place and finding what's lovely about it, but she likes this better, the slow give of one kind of countryside to another as they travel.

She and Kithri have never talked much when they're together, and it holds true on their journey. Sometimes Kithri will point out an interesting sight on the side of the carriage Valira isn't looking out, or Valira will ask a question about a village they've just passed through, but mostly they go along in companionable silence, Valira capturing sketches whose lines jump with every bump in the road and Kithri sometimes reading, sometimes looking out at the scenery, sometimes writing letters, used to the rock and sway of carriages when her life as a Wandering Warden has meant that her carriage is more home than her Hylene lodgings.

Kithri's itinerary takes them a long way, across rolling fields and forest to the hillier country to the south and west, skirting a lesser mountain range than the one that lies past Sir Solomon's holdings, and going out to the coast, where Valira sits on the gravel beach while Kithri goes about her work, letting the salt air sting her cheeks and the spray make her dress progressively more damp until the wind and wet have her shivering even though it's the height of summer. They stop in travelers' inns with proprietors who treat Kithri with cheerful familiarity and don't quite know what to do with Valira as a respectable young woman with a reputation to protect. They visit villages with a thousand differences and similarities, to heal the sick and meet with Kithri's contacts and, Valira suspects, Kithri is asking questions about demons behind closed doors. They even see great houses, the marvels of architecture greater than Fairpoint Hold that seem like castles but are, Kithri assures her, nothing to the king's palace, with grounds well or ill managed. Kithri quizzes Valira about her impressions of those, and Valira gives them willingly, finding that she has strong opinions on which owners and stewards treat their land well and which don't deserve to run them.

It's a busy and overwhelming month before Kithri marks something off a map in the carriage one day and says “We'll be at Belvale Park soon.”

Valira blinks at her, surprised. With the real land in front of her, it's easy to ignore the thought of maps, even though whenever she thinks about it she's unaccountably nervous about visiting Major Ewhoza's land. “So soon?”

“I do have to get you back eventually,” Kithri says, a little wry. “You won't make a Warden, if you haven't noticed us getting closer.”

Valira shrugs. “Was that the plan? I don't think I'd be very good at that.”

“No, you need roots,” Kithri agrees. “But yes, we'll be there within a few days, and then I should start steering you towards home, though I think we could properly take another month on the return journey if Arfil doesn't start sounding too pitiful in his letters.”

That makes Valira smile, before she remembers what they're talking about, and can fully think about what it would be like to show up on Major Ewhoza's doorstep to tour his elegant house like anyone might, as though there isn't uncomfortable history between them. It wouldn't, she's sure, be any more comfortable for him than for her. “Perhaps we should just look at the grounds,” she says. “I'm eager to see those, but if you're going to talk to him about the demon, I can't think he'll want me anywhere near him during that.”

Kithri snorts. “He won't be home, if he's as fashionable as you all say—at some party or other, no doubt. We can properly see the house, and I can poke around asking his servants and tenants to confirm the story he gave you, which is more important than interviewing him if you ask me.”

“I don't know if he's fashionable as much as he is rich,” Valira says, but it's a reassuring thing to hear. People like the Windroses, like Ewhoza, like Sir Solomon, they spend summers visiting each other as often as not. Chances are Ewhoza is off on a visit, since the Windroses and their family seem to like him even if no one else does, and if anyone is in residence, it's just his cousin, who has no reason to have heard of Valira or to receive her if they visit the house.

“We'll see the house, I'll look for information, and you'll get to complain about his and his steward's choices about whatever they're doing with the land, and we'll be gone in a day or three with no need to see him.”

Three days is far longer than they've stayed anywhere else on this journey, but if Kithri has investigations to do, Valira can suffer through it. She'll only be expected to go to Belvale Park on one day, and there's a public forest near enough that she can convince Kithri to let her borrow the coach the other days and enjoy the old growth forests that will remind her of where she grew up, that feature in all her happiest childhood memories. “I suppose I can bear that,” she says, and smiles when Kithri snorts something about dramatic younglings before changing the subject.

*

The inn nearest Belvale Park is small and quiet and pleasant, probably because it's not near a crossroads or major shipping routes, so it doesn't get many travelers. The people who own it don't know Kithri but profess themselves honored to host one of her order, and don't bat an eye at Kithri making a point of saying that Valira is a gentlewoman. They say that it's been a long time since there was a party at the big house that made use of their services, and they sound pleased when they say it, but otherwise they leave Valira and Kithri mostly to their own devices, since they arrive in the evening and turning up on the house's doorstep at that hour would be very rude.

In the morning, Kithri sends a note to Belvale Park and hears back from the housekeeper that the family isn't in residence but they're welcome to tour the public areas of the house and grounds if they wish, so they dress and go to meet with her.

It's a lovely forested valley, the road to the house sloping down and down, and Valira is shocked to silence when they pass onto the grounds of Belvale Park, because it's clear that, some ten or twenty years ago, someone was at the trees. There are gaps in the treeline, places where she can imagine a tree that she couldn't get her arms halfway around, now gone, most likely sold. Some of the tenant houses they pass show signs of long neglect, but also of recent repair, boards not yet weathered by winter and fresh roofs. In the distance, she can see where thinner and younger parts of the forest have been used to shelter crops, and where there might be cleared fields for other ones, and for every tree taken down, there seem to be five saplings planted, waiting to see which one will grow best.

“What do you think?” Kithri asks as they go up the long drive and the wilder parts of the grounds recede into the more curated gardens and ponds, the parts the rich like to show off, though even those show signs of recent repair and change, freshly-planted beds of native flowers and the ponds less stagnant than most she's seen on this journey.

“Someone almost ruined this place,” she says, frowning around. “They harvested the forest too much, a while ago—it wouldn't have lasted many more years of that pace, since it was a lot and seems to have happened all at once.”

“Almost?” Kithri asks.

“I think it's healing,” says Valira, which gives her plenty to think about as they finally approach the house.

The house is odd too, though that, she thinks, happened a little farther in the past than the rest of the grounds. It's the only piece of the grounds not showing signs of old neglect, in perfect condition, but the center of it is clearly an old rough stone fort, defensible, with few concessions to modern design and comfort, and the wings of it were built much later, all lavish wealth and smooth tawny stone and large windows where the ones in the fort are barely more than arrow-slits.

Kithri, when she catches Valira looking, rolls her eyes in companionable horror. “All these landowners. Probably the first Ewhoza to own the land was awarded it after a good show defending the fort, and after the border moved a little way away from it, they decided to show off. Not too old, if that's the case, only a hundred years or so.” She frowns. “If it was military, I'm surprised they weren't ennobled.”

“I'm just glad they weren't, Major Ewhoza is insufferable enough without having to call him 'my lord' all the time.”

Kithri laughs, and they ride in silence up to the front door, which gives more weight to the assumption that Belvale was once a fort. The ground around the raised drive is a little soggy, like once someone dug a moat and it's past due for a regular filling to keep it from sinking, and the stone around the door is newer than everywhere else, a replacement for an old gatehouse door, or maybe even a portcullis. It's a funny, mismatched house, for all someone tried to make it serious and grand, and Valira's always been fond of funny, mismatched things, so she can't hold back her smile as Kithri knocks on the door.

Once they've made it past the butler, who in the way of all butlers seems suspicious that they might be there to steal the silver, they're greeted by the housekeeper, who to Valira's surprise is a goblin woman wearing a neat starched apron and who smells, as Kithri often does when she stays somewhere more than a few days at a time, of a kitchen full of good things, when she gets close enough to shake their hands.

“I'm Mrs. Wrez,” she says, with a wide and pleasant smile, “and I'll be showing you around the house today. Warden Tealeaf and Miss Linnaeus, you said in your note?”

“That's us,” Kithri confirms. “I've been showing Miss Linnaeus some of the country, and I've heard good things about this house—and the grounds, Miss Linnaeus is a druid of some skill, even if she's young.”

Mrs. Wrez beams between them, pleased without a hint of anything else to it. “If you like, you can walk around the grounds after your tour of the house. Anything not ready for public view is clearly marked, Major Ewhoza makes certain of it. The grounds are his pride and joy, you know.”

“Are they?” says Valira, and thinks about his shakes of the head over his uncle's property management, strong opinions on pasturing and crops. “Forgive me, but it seems like they haven't always had pride of place.”

That brings a transient frown to Mrs. Wrez's face. “The old general wished to modernize the estate, and particularly the house,” she says tactfully. “His son shares more of his mother's views.”

There's been no mention of Mrs. Ewhoza when she's met Ewhoza before, but there's no polite way of asking why, so Valira just makes an interested noise and lets Mrs. Wrez move them out of the entrance hall.

It's a funny house, nearly as mismatched inside as outside, even if it's clear that someone, probably Major Ewhoza's father, did indeed want it decorated in fine style. The walls in the old fort are hung with dramatic tapestries, old battle scenes, and little of the living of the house seems to happen in that part, from how much of it they're permitted to see—there are guest rooms, quarters for a few of the servants, and Mrs. Wrez tells them that the kitchen for canning and preserving is in the back of it, the thicker stone of the walls making it much more bearable in the summer. In the newer parts, there are gaudy, colorful wallpapers, but gaps where there might once have been ornate ornaments, though they're often replaced with carved wood or stone. The furniture, overall, seems comfortable but unfashionable, and newly upholstered.

Valira, to her surprise, finds herself loving the place. There's art, but it's nothing next to the views out the windows, and the curtains are drawn back to draw attention to them with little thought for the fading of the wallpaper. The newest things are plain and practical and comfortable, much more what she likes than the rooms she's seen in other houses, as gorgeous as a sugar sculpture and just as comfortable to be around. Whoever is behind the redecoration, whether it's Major Ewhoza or Miss Denrathy, isn't spending a fortune replacing everything at once, either, as someone clearly spent a fortune making it look like a doll's house in an exhibition show.

Kithri and Mrs. Wrez seem to immediately approve of one another, comfortably exchanging tips on recipes and decorations, and Valira is glad to leave them to their conversation, drifting along quietly in their wake, peering at a music room mostly bare but for a well-loved harp and a pianoforte that gives the impression of gathering dust even if the staff would clearly never allow that and a sitting room left entirely in someone else's style that Mrs. Wrez says carelessly is mostly used for business meetings and receiving guests from the major's days in the army.

Not far away, they find the room that Valira suspects is the most changed, and the most used as well, though most signs of real business are tidied away waiting for Major Ewhoza's return. It's a study made up in dark wood with few ornaments but books on the bookshelves and, on a wall where they aren't quite in sight of the desk, a painting. “Most family portraits are in the gallery where I'll take you next,” Mrs. Wrez says comfortably, “but this one Major Ewhoza keeps here. His father had it commissioned when the major first joined the army.”

Valira comes closer to find a picture of four people in a fairly conventional family grouping. At the center, a man and a woman, he human and she elvish, an explanation of the major's elvish features. General Ewhoza is a tall, solid man in a spindly-legged chair that looks like it might break under his weight, in his military dress uniform, bristling with medals, with a face that looks given to sneering even if it's frozen into a smug smile. There's something familiar in the angle of his head, the shape of his nose and chin, but Major Ewhoza mostly seems to take after his mother, a woman so willow-thin she nearly disappears, her fashionable gown eclipsing her even if Valira thinks she must have been pretty, her smile coming nowhere close to touching her eyes. And then with them, two young men, and both of them familiar and not at all at the same time. Major Ewhoza is younger, of course, but there's fire in his eyes, and the straightness of his posture seems less aloof and more alert. He stands with his hand on his mother's shoulder and a smile on his face happier than any she's seen from him.

Next to him is Mr. Loz, or the man he was once, before a demon erased him. She's used to seeing his features and thinking of him as a sharp, clever man, quick with his words, with an edge to them that could easily turn to gossip or mockery if encouraged. This Mr. Loz is softer, better-rested, with pink cheeks and more of a slouch to his posture, the only one of the four who looks truly happy to be having his portrait painted. He's a little way away from the family group—a ward but not a real member of the bloodline, included but not, and she feels a pang for him. She doesn't know if she would have liked the real Mr. Loz, and suspects she'd find him dull, but that doesn't mean he deserved to die.

“Does it look like him?” Kithri asks, and Valira realizes the other two have fallen silent while she stares.

Before Valira can scrape together an answer, Mrs. Wrez lets out a happy gasp. “Miss Linnaeus, you didn't tell me that you know the major! You must say it's a good likeness. He's very handsome, isn't he?”

It's not as though she can say otherwise to such a loyal and fond servant, but Valira can agree the man in the portrait is handsome, which means Major Ewhoza must be, though the way he carries himself is nearly as different as if he's still carrying a demon instead of passing it to Mr. Loz. It's hard to think of him as handsome when what he's mostly been is cold and quiet and isolated. “It's a good likeness,” she says at last. “I happen to know the other young gentleman as well.”

Mrs. Wrez clucks and shakes her head. “Ran off a year ago before he could take our temple posting, that boy. He'd always seemed much steadier than that, but you can never tell with these young ones. At least Major Ewhoza has been ministering to the tenants just as much as he would have, seeing to any—past damages. But you must know he would do such things, if you know him.”

“Of course,” Valira agrees, because it's easier than telling the truth, and because she's beginning to wonder if she knows him at all.

“How did you meet him?” Mrs. Wrez asks, back to her fond smile, suddenly much more interested in Valira than she had been before.

“He was a guest in my neighborhood, and then I was a guest in the dower house on his uncle's lands, so we've met a few times.”

Her smile is warm and sincere and baffling. “Then you must agree there's no one kinder or more responsible! We're all so glad to have him, and are pleased about the care he takes for his cousin, and hope he finds a good bride someday, as though anyone could be good enough.”

_It could have been me,_ Valira doesn't say, because she can't explain to this woman how unkind Ewhoza has been to her, how little of his kindness and goodness he's shown to her, how this house and these grounds are evidence for Mrs. Wrez's side but she never would have guessed about any of it before. “I'm sure I couldn't comment on that,” she says instead.

“I suppose not.” Mrs. Wrez purses her lips and sighs at the picture. “I'll show you the portrait gallery next, but his father and mother are the last paintings. He hasn't yet chosen to sit for one, though he did have Miss Denrathy sit for a watercolorist over the winter.” She brightens. “Just turn, that's on the shelf with the estate books, actually!”

Valira does, grateful for the excuse to call Miss Denrathy pretty, which she is, with a fashionable hairstyle and a stubborn chin and a weapon sitting defiantly in her lap, and to follow Mrs. Wrez to the portrait gallery, which she mostly finds dull, other than the picture of Mrs. Ewhoza looking much more vivid and happy, painted in the first year of her marriage according to Mrs. Wrez. Mrs. Wrez is much more interested in Valira than before, applying to her for her opinion on this and that and hoping for compliments to Major Ewhoza's taste and person, but Kithri mostly keeps her distracted, and gets her to mention Mr. Loz a few more times.

As the tour is winding to a close and Mrs. Wrez is telling them about trails across the estate that they might want to take, she stops in the middle and turns to Valira with a smile. “Silly me! I ought to have asked if you'll be staying long enough to see Major Ewhoza when he comes home.”

Valira clenches her hand so tight in the fabric of her skirt that she fears wrinkles. “I didn't know he was coming. I suppose I assumed he was gone for the summer.”

“No, not at all—he sent word he'll be here within a week, with a small party of friends. If you know him, perhaps you're the advance guard?”

Valira shakes her head. “No, I haven't heard word of him in quite some time, and this has just been a stop Warden Tealeaf wanted to make. I'm afraid we'll be gone before he arrives.” And he won't want to hear from her, she's sure of that. It's going to be best if Kithri gets the information she wants and they go before he ever hears she was here. “We're barely acquainted, he certainly wouldn't want me intruding on an intimate party.”

“He'd be happy to see any acquaintance, I'm sure!” says Mrs. Wrez, but doesn't press, and talks about pie with Kithri as she shows them out the door, and points them in the direction of what she says is the prettiest path to walk.

“We're staying as long as I need to learn what I want to learn,” Kithri warns her before Valira can speak, and Valira sighs and starts out towards the path.

It begins somewhere behind the stables, and she listens to Kithri talk about Mrs. Wrez's recipe for pie crust and the differences she disapproves of but still wants to try, half-amused and half-annoyed, until she catches movement out of the corner of her eye, turns, and spots Major Ewhoza himself coming out of the stable. She halts, wondering if she has time to bolt, just in time for Kithri to say something loud and emphatic about butter that has him turning, curious, and seeing both of them.

There's a frozen moment where all Valira can think about is when she last saw him in the spring, how terribly it all went. He's dusty from the road, pink-cheeked from a warm day's travel, and staring, no hint of coldness or aloofness in his face, just pure shock.

“Ah,” says Kithri, when she realizes why Valira has stopped walking. “The master of the house, I assume?”

There's enough space between them that he could pretend not to recognize her, touch his cap to guests to his estate, and leave, but of course he doesn't. Instead, he takes Kithri's words as a cue to approach them, walking slowly, like he's unsure of coming closer even as he does it. “Miss Linnaeus. I didn't know I would have the pleasure.”

“I didn't know you'd be home,” she blurts, and closes her eyes for a moment, horrified at herself. “I apologize,” she manages a moment later. Eventually he draws to a stop, at a polite distance, and gives them a quick bow, so Valira curtsies in return as Kithri nods, and scrapes together what courtesy she can. “Wandering Warden Kithri Tealeaf, this is Major Ewhoza, our unwitting host today. We've been touring your house, and were just beginning a tour of your grounds. Mrs. Wrez was kind enough to recommend a path.”

“Warden Tealeaf, a pleasure. And a pleasure to host you both.” He frowns between them. “If you don't mind that I'm still dressed for the road, there's a path I can direct you to that you may like better, Miss Linnaeus. Mrs. Wrez likes the most curated path best, and most visitors do too, but there's a forest path that I think you might enjoy.”

There's something careful in his voice, and Valira thinks if she told him the curated path would do well enough, he'd go inside and she wouldn't hear from him again. She ought to do that, in fact. But just as much as he seems careful, he seems hopeful, wondering if his letter might have mended fences at all. She doesn't think he'll try to renew his proposal, not after their last talk, so perhaps she can let Kithri ask him a few questions. It's worth trying, anyway. “Do show us,” she says, and he blinks a few times, like it wasn't the answer he was expecting. “I do prefer the forest, and you have some beautiful trees.”

“Less than we did once,” he says, and starts walking. “But I'm trying to rebuild the forest and maintain what we have.”

They talk easily enough about his plans for his forest as they walk, until Kithri interrupts as they move onto a path covered in the remains of dead leaves, a fine mulch with just enough gravel under it to keep it from being soggy, in the heart of the valley. Instead of asking about Mr. Loz, she asks about some family recipes of his that Mrs. Wrez mentioned, and Valira's surprised to hear him laugh for the first time.

“I haven't thought about them in ages,” he says when he catches her look. “My father's grandmother loved to bake, and we still have her recipes. Warden, you're welcome to stop by tomorrow, I'll show you her book.”

“Kind of you,” says Kithri, gives Valira a thin smile, and wanders down the path, paying just enough attention to a flowering shrub to make it clear she's providing a modicum of privacy.

“You and your family are well, I hope?” he asks after a moment and a few caught breaths that make her think it's not how he meant to begin.

“Well enough,” she says. “And you and Miss Denrathy?”

“Well enough.” He hesitates. “I left just ahead of her to catch up on business before her return, actually. She'll be back tomorrow, and I know she'd like to meet you. Perhaps, if you aren't too busy, I could bring her to meet you before you leave?”

Valira blinks at him, but she can't very well say no. “If she'd like, and if Kithri doesn't want to move on. Mrs. Wrez said you're having a party, though. I wouldn't like to interrupt.”

“You wouldn't be interrupting this one. It's actually the Windroses and Captain Kahalar.”

Valira stops walking, and he only continues a step before he realizes she isn't beside him. Kithri, down the path and rapidly moving out of earshot, pauses long enough to see if Valira needs help, but Valira shakes her head, and she keeps going. “Do you think that's a good idea?” she asks when she judges that Kithri has gone far enough.

“They were sorry to have missed you at Sir Solomon's. I suspect if you come to call on my cousin, you're going to be pulled into the party for the day.” His smile looks strange and unpracticed on his face, and Valira thinks of the portrait in his study, how his smile was tacked-on for the picture even if his satisfaction wasn't but how it still looked at home on him. “You don't need to feel obligated, but I know they'll want to see you.”

“And if they ask me about Quil?”

“Then you'll give whatever answer you think best,” he says, and she manages to make herself start walking again. “I mean that.”

And, the earnestness in his voice says, she can trust his honesty, the way she did with his letter. “That's a change,” she says, and does her best to keep her tone light.

“I asked you to reexamine your thoughts, and see what I thought,” he says, and lets her work out the rest for herself.

They walk in silence for a few moments before Valira says “Kithri's a powerful cleric. I told her and Arfil. You might not be able to do anything, but maybe they can. She's here to ask questions.”

“I wondered if you'd keep it secret. Wasn't sure what I hoped. I ...” He stops, and Valira looks around at the trees. The path takes them into a part of the forest that General Ewhoza didn't try to ruin, perhaps because it's close enough to the house that would have ruined his view, and she can hear the songs of birds higher up in the branches. “I wish I were brave enough to offer to help, but the geas it laid on me is strong.”

“You did help. You kept my soul from being stolen, and people know about him now. They'll find him.”

“That's a change,” he says, parroting her words, and it might almost be a joke. “I'm glad that you at least trust me that far.”

The rest of the walk is quiet, and the path loops them gently back to the stables, where Ewhoza excuses himself quickly, saying that he really does have business to attend to and that his staff will be wondering about him, with his horse stabled and him not yet in the house. Valira sees him off, agrees again that she'll come the day after his guests and his cousin arrive, and is glad to walk back to their carriage with Kithri.

“You were far more friendly than I thought you'd be,” says Kithri, with her eyebrows raised. “I don't know if you should be trusting a man who housed a demon.”

“I trusted the demon itself over him before, and that wasn't a very good idea,” she points out, over Kithri's snort. “And we aren't friends, but I owed him being polite, at least.”

“If you're sure,” says Kithri, and then softens her disapproval a little. “I'll be happy enough to see those recipes, at least, if you don't mind going over.”

“The Windroses will be there, if you didn't hear him say so. It will be interesting to see them again.”

Kithri snorts again, but she doesn't comment, and Valira looks out the carriage window, watches the lands go by, all the work that's gone into them, and Mrs. Wrez's insistance that Major Ewhoza has saved the place, after his father nearly sent it out of balance. She wonders what she would have thought if she'd said yes, driving down the slope into the valley for the first time, looking at her new home, but it's a fruitless question, and she turns her attention to the sky instead, and the shape of the clouds moving far above them.

*

The next day, Kithri announces her intention to stay at the inn. She could go around and ask more questions about Mr. Loz, but she has correspondence to catch up on, letters to send about where she'll be going after she leaves Valira at home, records to keep of the clerical services she's offered in the past few weeks. Valira uses the time to write to Quil, though she doesn't mention the Windroses, and then to Cordelia, though the rare letters of Quil's that have caught up with her on her journey lament that Cordelia's letters grow ever shorter as she and Mrs. Starsinger enjoy local society and that only Trilli hears more than a few sentences a week from her and still declines to share. Still, Cordelia might like to hear from Valira on her journey, so she writes and posts that as well as her letter to Quil, and then starts one to Trilli only to be interrupted by the sounds of hooves in the inn's courtyard, and then a mess of overlapping friendly chatter downstairs.

She's just standing to see who's come to such a quiet inn when the innkeeper comes to knock on her door, her cheeks pink and her smile wide. “Miss, you should have said you're acquainted with the folk at the Park! They've come to visit you.”

“They've what?” she asks, shocked silly at their arrival a day before she was supposed to visit them.

“Major Ewhoza and Miss Denrathy and some friends of theirs have all come, said they're out for a ride and thought they might see if you're in!”

Valira isn't really dressed for company, but she doesn't care much about that, just puts on a shawl, asks the innkeeper to let Kithri know where she is, though the party sounds large enough for propriety to be satisfied, and goes down.

The common room is full of people, but her eye goes to the door first, where the innkeeper's husband is shaking Major Ewhoza's hand in the manner of someone who forgot he's still holding it and just keeps shaking on instinct despite the conversation having moved on. Major Ewhoza seems uncomfortable but not upset, more rueful than disgusted, darting anxious glances around that stop when he catches sight of her coming through the stairway door.

At the bar, ordering cold lemonade from an overawed waitress, are the Windroses, Lanra, and a girl about Trilli's age who Valira immediately recognizes from the watercolor. Phi notices her first, turning away from the waitress at the sound of the door shutting and greets her with a brighter smile than seems right considering their circumstances. “Miss Linnaeus,” she says, which draws everyone else's attention, and comes right over to Valira, hands out to clasp Valira's own. “Valira. Once Haoti told us you were here, we couldn't be swayed from coming to see you, I hope you'll forgive us.”

“Of course,” she says automatically, “but you needn't have gone to the trouble. Major Ewhoza already asked if I'd call tomorrow, saying you'd like to renew the acquaintance.”

“Of course we would,” says Phi, with a warm smile, and then Terry is behind her, and Lanra too, greeting her happily, asking about her journey, what brings her so far from home, how she's liked the places she's seen, and a hundred other questions that don't seem to be what Phi and Terry want to be asking at all until, somewhere behind them, Major Ewhoza clears his throat.

“I don't mean to interrupt,” he says, though it's obviously a lie, and Valira steps to the side to see him standing with his hand on his cousin's shoulder. She's a tall young woman who looks about as severe as Kithri at her most irascible, wearing men's clothes with the ease and comfort of common use. “Miss Linnaeus, may I present my cousin? Miss Estara Denrathy.”

“Miss Denrathy, it's a pleasure,” says Valira, giving her a formal little bow. Girls her age like formality, she knows that with Trilli and Cordelia in the house. Nothing, she suspects, thrills them more than having Quil and Valira out of the way so they can have the dignity of Miss Linnaeus and Miss Myale all to themselves. “I've heard so much about you.”

“Hmm. You too.” After a moment, she bows in return. “A pleasure,” she adds, as though she's just deciding it. “Haoti speaks of you often.”

Valira glances at Major Ewhoza, who she catches in the middle of a wince, and then at the rest of the party, finding Phi and Terry admirably straight-faced and Lanra hiding a smile. “Well, I'm glad to meet you. And to see the rest of you again. Please, tell me how you all are.”

It's a warm conversation, but a careful one. Phi, Terry, and Lanra ask her in general about her family, and in specific about any number of people, from Arfil to Frog, but Quil's name never crosses their lips and the absence is awkward. Miss Denrathy watches them all with her eyes narrowed and clear plethora of opinions she'd love to share given the excuse, and Major Ewhoza watches them all too, a lot more warily, but doesn't intervene, just throws periodic looks at Valira like he's wondering what she'll do.

Terry is the one who breaks, in the end, when they've all finished their lemonade and have just passed the point of a polite call. “And Quil—Miss Myale? She's well, I hope?”

Phi, though she's standing behind him, shakes her head just a fraction, too late, like she's wishing she could have stopped him, and Lanra, who's been teasing Miss Denrathy about her dedication to weapons training, leaves off to look at the interplay, which means she does too. Ewhoza already was, so it leaves all of them watching Valira, and the question a lot more weighty than she'd like it to be, when all Quil will say is that she's over her heartbreak and no one needs to worry about her anymore. “She's well,” she says. What else can she say? “She was in Hylene this spring, though I understand you didn't see each other.”

“We didn't have the pleasure, no, though we heard she was there,” says Phi.

“Everyone is wondering,” Valira continues, determined to say something, now that the conversation is begun, “if you plan to come back or if perhaps the house had too many memories for you and you might prefer to set up elsewhere.”

Phi and Terry exchange a lightning-quick look, reading something into what she said. She hopes they're reading the right thing, though she's not actually sure what that is. “We're not sure,” Phi says at last. “We hope to come back at some point, yes, but I'm not sure it's where we'd like to make our home outside of Hylene for the rest of our lives. But for now we're still the primary deed-holders.”

“I'll happily take it off your hands,” says Lanra, a shade too jovial, and there's a brief relieved argument about it.

Ewhoza is the one who interrupts. “We should stop interrupting your day, Miss Linnaeus, and for all the energy they have, they were barely off the road for an hour before they decided they wanted to go for a ride and see you. You still plan to come tomorrow? I'd hate for Warden Tealeaf to miss out on the recipe book.” He pauses. “And perhaps the two of you will come for dinner in a few days? To vary the company of our party? We'd be glad to have you.”

“Thank you,” says Valira, startled. “Yes, we're still coming tomorrow, she wouldn't miss those recipes, and I'll ask her about dinner, though I can't give you an answer now.”

“An answer whenever you're ready will do,” he says, and in just a few more moments he's encouraged his friends and his cousin out the door, and Valira is left alone. The waitress looks curious, and the innkeeper's husband shows signs of asking a few questions, so she gives them a tight smile and goes up to ask Kithri if they're staying long enough to attend a dinner, and isn't sure which answer she hopes they receive.

*

When they arrive for their call the next day, Valira is expecting the butler to show her to the room Mrs. Wrez says is mostly used for less intimate guests, less comfortable ones, the one still decorated to General Ewhoza's fashionable tastes. Instead, they're brought to a room that wasn't part of the tour, a room with calm blue wallpaper and chairs built for comfort, with a few paintings of wildflowers on the walls.

Lanra and Miss Denrathy are on opposite sides of a card table, playing what looks like a brutal round of something, and Ewhoza is leafing through a book, but all three of them stand when the butler announces them. Valira introduces Kithri to Lanra and Miss Denrathy, and they all exchange a few polite words before Ewhoza puts his book down and offers Kithri his arm. “Warden Tealeaf, I promised you that book of recipes. I can escort you to Mrs. Wrez, if you like—and if you don't mind me going, Miss Linnaeus?”

“The recipes are very important,” says Valira, because bluntly saying she doesn't mind his going feels a little too dangerous.

“Then I'll be back in just a moment.”

“I'll find you when I'm ready to go,” Kithri tells Valira, and takes Ewhoza's arm to all but drag him from the room.

“You know the most interesting people,” says Lanra, with his usual easy smile.

“Is it true she's a Wandering Warden?” Miss Denrathy asks, with what seems to be begrudging respect.

“She is, and she likes talking about it if it's a path you're interested in,” says Valira.

Miss Denrathy shrugs. “I'm Uncle Solomon's heir, can't really be a wandering cleric.”

“As though you'd be able to put your weapon down long enough to be a healer,” says Lanra, and turns back to Valira. “Miss Denrathy's getting closer to paladin training, like her cousin. Also, Phi and Terry should be back soon, they went out for a walk since we didn't know exactly when you would be here, but they'll definitely return in plenty of time to see you, so we can catch up a little more easily than yesterday.”

“Is there much to catch up on?” she asks, a little more acid than she means to, and then glances at Miss Denrathy and changes the subject. “While we wait for them, then, how have you been these past few months?”

Lanra is happy to tell her about the winter parties he attended, and his spring on border duty, and to pull Miss Denrathy into the conversation too, asking about her training and her lessons, though like Valira's sisters she seems to resent being in the stage of learning about things more than acting on them. She doesn't even seem to be out in society, not having guardians worn down by years of arguments that if her old sisters should get to do something she should as well.

“And Major Ewhoza is a good guardian?” she asks when there's a pause in the conversation, and tries to ask it as though she's expecting the answer to be yes, a polite affirmation instead of a probe.

Either she's doing a bad job, or Miss Denrathy is more observant than Valira gives her credit for, from the way her eyes narrow. It might be both, because Lanra is watching, wondering what she'll say, but he's not interrupting or deflecting, either. “I didn't know him very well before he was my guardian,” Miss Denrathy says at last. “I was raised by my mother and her side of the family, and when she passed away, Uncle Solomon recommended I go to Aunt Aredhel and her family. So I came here, and after about a year, the general passed away too.” She lifts her chin. “Haoti is prefereable to the general.”

From what Valira has heard, she's not surprised. There seems to be a lot of family history she doesn't understand, but what little she knows seems painful. At least she can understand that. “I'm glad, then. You certainly seem to be thriving.”

“I am.” Miss Denrathy frowns at her, and Valira has an uncomfortable moment of wondering how much her cousin confides in her. Does she know he proposed? Does she know the whole horrible tale of Mr. Loz? It's impossible to ask, because she doesn't want Lanra to know about either, the former for her own sake and the latter for Ewhoza's. “He's a good man,” she adds at last. “He just doesn't always realize it.”

“Oh look, Phi and Terry are coming back,” says Lanra with every appearance of relief as he glances out the window, halfway to his feet. “I'll tell them you're here, Valira.”

Valira can only imagine the uncomfortable conversation she'll be subjected to if Lanra abandons her to Miss Denrathy's tender mercies, so she stands instead, and sure enough, the Windroses are coming up the drive, arms companionably linked, heads bent together. “I'll go out to meet them,” she says. “If you two will excuse me?”

Neither of them looks like they particularly want to excuse her, but they can't exactly say no, either, so Miss Denrathy subsides without continuing to say any of the many things that are clearly on her mind and Lanra sighs and returns to his card table. Valira gets up and goes, telling a mildly alarmed-looking footman where she's going so he doesn't feel the need to go fetch Ewhoza and Kithri and tell them she's escaping.

It's only halfway down the hall that she realizes being alone with Phi and Terry isn't much of an improvement, but by then she's set on her course and she can't exactly turn around without having to explain to someone.

By the time she comes out the door, they're nearly to the steps, and all three of them freeze, before Terry's shock turns into a warm smile. “Valira! Tell me we haven't missed you entirely.”

“No, not at all, I barely arrived and I don't know how long Kithri will be looking at those recipes. I saw you out the window and thought I'd greet you.”

“I'm glad you did,” says Phi, her smile smaller but just as warm. There's something nervous in her expression, and Valira doesn't know how she can like someone so much and want to scream herself hoarse at them at the same time. “We'll walk you back up. They're in the sitting room, I assume?”

“I assume so too, there's more than one sitting room, but I do know the way back.” She waits for them to come up, and frowns at the butler until he lets her hold the door. She's lived her life with housekeepers, but butlers are a completely different breed and, she's discovering, an officious one.

They're barely a few steps away from eavesdropping ears when Terry starts talking. “I'm glad to hear that your family is well, but any further news you'd care to share would be welcome.” Phi makes a small noise Valira can't interpret, but he keeps talking. “I know we weren't in your neighborhood long, but we became fond of the people.”

Valira waits until they're through a door, away from the worst of scrutiny, before she stops walking so she can face them fully. “What do you expect me to say?” she asks, and watches Terry's cheeks flame, watches Phi's expression shutter. “I don't know what you want from me. You were the ones who left. What does it matter to you how 'the people' feel?”

They exchange a look, and Phi steps forward. “We still care about her. It just … it didn't feel right, and we had that confirmed by a friend—”

“Yes, he told me he interfered. I still expected better from you. You could at least have asked her what she wanted.”

“And would she have been honest if the answer had been no?” Terry asks, and it could be a challenge, but he looks worn out and sad instead.

Quil's feelings and confessions are her own, and Valira isn't going to give them for her. She starts walking again instead, and waits for the sound of footsteps behind her. “That's her question to answer. All I know is that you raised a young woman's hopes and left and you still seem to care for her and I don't understand any of it, no matter what a friend told you.”

They're still following her, and they don't say anything, and much as she wants to turn around and see how they react, she doesn't. This is already more than Quil would want her to say. She has the singular emotion, it turns out, of being relieved when she turns a corner and nearly runs into Major Ewhoza, who blinks at her. “Miss Linnaeus, you weren't leaving already?”

“No, how could I? Kithri is still looking at the recipes, or I assume she is.”

“Right. Of course.”

The silence that follows is so excruciating that Valira considers leaving after all, Kithri or no Kithri. She can't look around for help when she's all but accused the Windroses of breaking her sister's heart, so she's stuck staring at Ewhoza, who's just as stuck as she is in this mess of a call. Just when she's about to open her mouth to say something, anything at all, his eyes flick over her shoulder, and a second later, Terry speaks. “Lanra and Star must be wondering where we are. Shall we go back?”

His light tone feels false, but no more than her own when she says “Of course, I shouldn't neglect them.” They all start moving a second later, a flurry of activity to make up for the horrible awkwardness of the hallway.

The call lasts another half an hour before Kithri comes and tells Valira they ought to go, and Valira has never been so happy to leave a social gathering in her life, no matter how charming Lanra set himself to being once he read the mood upon everyone else's return.

“You'll still come for dinner in a few nights' time?” Ewhoza asks as he shows them to the sitting room door, speaking to Valira but looking at Kithri. “I know you have to move on, but the invitation is sincere. You deserve it, especially considering the problem you've taken on, Warden.”

Of course they didn't just talk recipes. “Name the day,” Kithri says, though she doesn't seem overly happy about it.

“I'll send a card or make a quick call as soon as we've scheduled it, but I'll make it soon. I know you're both busy, and have other places to go,” he says, and shows them out.

*

Valira goes for a walk the next morning. The scenery around the inn is just as lovely as the scenery around Belvale Park, and a good deal less likely to contain people she'd rather avoid, and Kithri, used to traveling mostly alone other than staff, seems to be trying to pretend she's not sick of so much companionship. They can both use the time apart.

She takes the time to draw sketches for a few local wildflowers she hasn't seen since she started her botanical drawings, stops to talk to people as they pass even if she's asked a disconcerting number of times if she's there for Ewhoza's house party, and generally dawdles much longer than she should unchaperoned in a strange place before she turns back to the inn. The endless views from Kithri's carriage are beautiful, can take her much farther than her own two feet can, but she'll always prefer walking, when it's practical.

By the time she gets to the inn's courtyard, she's in a good enough mood that she can smile and roll her eyes instead of scowling over running into Ewhoza as he enters from the other side, horse coming to an abrupt stop, and makes an apologetic grimace as soon as he sees her. “I wanted to go for a ride and had the handy excuse of delivering you and the warden a dinner invitation.”

“The rest of the party didn't come, then?”

“No.” He dismounts and ties his horse to the hitching post before any of the staff can hasten out of the inn to do it for him. “Phi is keeping up on correspondence, and Terry and Lanra are teaching my cousin how to gamble, which I thought might be more fun for her if I wasn't there.”

Valira smiles. “I bet she'll be formidable, once she has the basics.”

“She already does,” he admits, and a wide smile breaks out on his face, and she remembers his portrait again, and everything that's happened since. “Lanra and Terry don't know what kind of fleecing they're in for.”

She can't help a laugh at that, which startles both of them. “And you abandoned them to it?”

“They'll catch on quickly enough, and she'll be in a good mood for the rest of the week, so I decided it's worth it. You must know how difficult it is to keep a girl of that age happy.”

“You should see how much Trilli pouted about Cordelia getting to go on a trip away when she couldn't,” she says, with a sympathetic roll of her eyes, before remembering that he doesn't approve of her family.

His disapproval isn't as visible as she would have thought, considering he just smiles more and shakes his head. “I can imagine. Estara is trying to convince me she's old enough to be out. I don't know how you can sleep, knowing they both are.”

“Not well,” she admits, thinking of Cordelia off in who knows what kind of society, ready to find herself a scandal, and starts walking inside. They can only stand in the courtyard so long without someone coming to ask them a question or otherwise nose into their business. “But they aren't so bad. Don't cause too many scandals.”

“Ah.” The smile falls off his face, and Valira feels a very stupid pang of guilt over it as he follows her inside. “I must owe you a dozen apologies.”

“Would you mean this one?” she asks, curious, as he moves ahead quickly to open the door, ever chivalrous.

“Miss Linnaeus—”

“Major Ewhoza, what a pleasure! And there were letters for you on the mail coach this morning, miss!” says the innkeeper as soon as they come in sight, and Ewhoza subsides, leaving Valira wondering what he was planning to say, though that recedes in the face of not one but two letters with Quil's writing on them, the first addressed to their last stop, where it must have just missed them. “The warden said you'd like to be told.”

“Of course, thank you.” Valira takes them and frowns at them. They look short, much shorter than the occasional epistles Quil has managed to time right for her to receive them on this journey, and if she's tried two in so short a span, something is most likely either very good or very bad, and the only good news she could think of to warrant that kind of letter would require the Windroses to be quite far from where they are now. “Major, you don't mind if I skim these quickly, do you? I wasn't expecting a letter, much less two, and I'm worried—”

“No, not at all. Though I may stay a few minutes? The conversation we were having—”

“Quite, of course.” She can't have the conversation or read the letters with the innkeeper's avid interest so nearby, and if she wants a private sitting room she'll have to wait for some kind of chaperone, so she turns around and goes back to the courtyard instead, finding a corner with a bench and letting Ewhoza follow her. “Excuse me a moment.”

Without a word, he bows and goes to see to his horse, a kindness she would thank him for if her heart weren't in her throat looking at the way Quil dashed off the direction on the letter with no care for smudging the ink. When she opens the seal, it's clear the letter is no better, but she knows Quil's hand well enough to read it without issue, and within two lines, she wishes she couldn't.

> Valira,
> 
> You and Kithri must come as soon as you can. I hope this reaches you before you leave for Belvale Park, because we need you both, and Arfil and Idilus have both gone and I don't think anyone with Sending has thought to Send to you, so it's up to me to explain: Cordelia's run away. Mrs. Starstriker wrote saying she was sorry Cordelia had to leave so suddenly and hopes that my mother is well, so Cordelia lied to her, and Trilli says that Cordelia was speaking with Mr. Loz, who was hiding himself in town and courting her.
> 
> We don't know where she's gone. Arfil and Idilus are looking for her, but we need you at home, and we need Kithri to help search, she knows more about demons than the other two. And my mother needs you, she's not doing well and she wants you home as soon as you can get here. Please come.

Valira rips the other letter open before the first even falls into her lap, but it's not good news, just Quil writing to say she thinks Valira must have missed her other letter, and they only know a little more than before, that Cordelia posted a letter after she ran away apologizing for running away to be married, and that Trilli has let them read Cordelia's letters and Cordelia obviously doesn't know he's a demon and just as obviously thinks she's in love with him.

She lets that letter fall too, and stands so fast she dumps them both on the ground and then almost stumbles when she steps on her hem, which makes Ewhoza turn away from his horse. Her face, when their eyes catch, makes him step forward quickly. “Valira—Miss Linnaeus, I'm sorry. What's happened? Bad news from home?”

“Yes. I'm sorry, I have to—there's so much I have to do. I need—”

“Sit,” he says, surprisingly firm, coming even closer. “I'll ask Mrs. Weaver to get Warden Greenleaf, you're in no state to go anywhere.”

Valira sits, more out of shock then anything else, and he disappears inside while she gathers up the letters and skims them again. Horribly, they still say the same thing, and by the time Ewhoza comes back outside, she's wishing she had the magic to be home immediately. Even Kithri doesn't, so it's going to be a hard few days of driving, and anything could happen to Cordelia in that time.

“How can I help?” Ewhoza asks, and she looks blindly up at him, at a loss. “I can keep you company until the warden comes, or leave you be, or—anything you ask. It's clear something went wrong.”

“You ought to know,” she says, and has to clear her throat around the way her voice wavers. She wants to take the coward's way out and hand over Quil's letters, but Quil wouldn't want that, so she makes herself meet his eyes. “It's Mr. Loz. He was hiding in the town where Cordelia was, and she seems to think she's eloping with him, but you know as well as I do that it won't be that, and it's my fault, it's got to be revenge on me.”

“It's not.” Within a second, he's kneeling beside her bench. “Cordelia didn't know?”

“No. Trilli either. We thought we shouldn't upset them.” She can, dimly, hear Kithri's raised voice inside, objecting to the urgent interruption, and she can only hope that the innkeeper overcomes it quickly. “We were fools, and now she's—that body was wearing out, she can't possibly still be alive. And they haven't been able to trace it before, and he's smart enough he won't have let Cordelia keep anything that could be traced from a distance.”

“Can they scry? Where might they go?”

“I don't know. Maybe.” Valira shakes her head, trying to get her thoughts started. “And I would guess Hylene. It's easier to get lost there than anywhere, and if its body is wearing out, it might not have the power to go too far.”

Ewhoza stands. “I'm sorry. I'm asking questions they no doubt have already thought of, I'm not doing any good. But this isn't your fault, Valira, I can promise you that. It's mine, for being too weak to withstand it and then for making a stupid bargain.”

“You saved your cousin.”

“They'll save your sister too.” He fidgets and takes a step away. “I should go. You won't want me here for this. But you should know—I would have meant the apology. Maybe someday I'll have the opportunity to make it without intruding.”

With that, he strides off, unties his horse, and is astride and gone before she remembers what he meant, just in time for Kithri to come outside, so she can explain it all over again, this time offering the letters as a faster explanation. Kithri's face goes grim and then furious as she reads, and a moment later she's storming back inside, calling for their horses to be hitched up, rousing the staff to pack their things, saying they need to be on the road within an hour.

Valira stays on her bench and thinks about the apology Ewhoza didn't make, and how he could possibly make it now and mean it. Even if he's rethought his bad opinion of her family, how its unusual structure might bring scandal, how none of them but Arfil are anything close to respectable, this will ruin it. He warned her about the demon that almost ruined him and would have killed the cousin under his protection and her family couldn't use that warning to protect themselves. She thinks he won't blame her out loud, or try to sway the Windroses again, but his likely bad opinion is still a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“This is my fault,” she says numbly when Kithri comes out to drag her inside to help with the packing. “I should have told Cordelia no matter what Arfil said, I shouldn't have let Mr. Loz know we knew so we had a chance of banishing him.”

“Don't be foolish,” says Kithri. “It won't help anything. What was Ewhoza here for?”

“To invite us to dinner, I think. Once he understood what was going on, he left.”

Kithri nods sharply. “First wise thing I've seen that boy do. He knows when you need to concentrate on other things, and he lets you.”

That sticks in her mind for a moment, a strange thought but not one that seems wrong—one of the first signs she's had from him not just of attempted kindness, or even of liking, but of respect. It would be easy to feel abandoned, with him choosing to go, but instead she's glad that he understood her need to go and didn't try to hold her up with attempts to help, however well-intentioned.

She lets that thought buoy her as she goes to pack, and it's the only lightness she has for two days as they drive straight through, switching horses as often they can, trying to get back home.

*

They arrive early in the morning, clattering into the dear and familiar dooryard and climbing out of the carriage without waiting to be handed down. Almost as soon as Valira is out, she's running, as though that will do any good, and the door opens to let Quil out, a shawl clutched around the shoulders of her nightdress, her eyes red and exhausted, and Valira opens her arms just in time to hug her as they meet instead of running into her. “I'm sorry, both your letters found us after a few days at Belvale Park, we must have just missed the first one. Any word?”

“None,” says Quil, her voice muffled in Valira's shoulder. “I'm so glad to see you. Mother was worried he'd try to find you, use Cordelia as leverage and put you both in danger, and Trilli's going mad blaming herself, and Arfil hasn't had any luck.”

“I'll be going to join them in a few hours,” Kithri says behind them. “I need a nap and a better idea of the situation, and I can go faster than the stage when I want to. I'll be there helping Arfil by tonight.”

“Where are Constance and Trilli?” Valira asks, letting Quil show them in, trusting the staff to deal with luggage and horses and any repairs that need to be made to the carriage after its ill use. She may have to go out and cast Mending before Kithri goes for reinforcement, but that can wait for a diagnosis from experts.

Quil shakes her head, and keeps Valira's arm firmly through hers, like she's worried she might fly away at any moment. “Sleeping, both of them, and they need it. Mother … this isn't the first time Cordelia's been in danger, and I think it's reminding her too much of last time. Cordelia and demons and everything. And this time I can't even go after her.”

That's probably a source of relief to Constance, but Quil sounds angry more than anything else. Valira tries to collect her scattered thoughts and turns to Kithri. “Do you need to eat before you sleep? Quil, is there a guest room prepared?”

“We've had one aired out in hopes for days. I'm sorry, Kithri, I'd hoped to receive you in better circumstances.”

“Don't be foolish,” says Kithri, and nods at them. “My usual, I assume?” Quil nods back, and Kithri takes leave with little more formality than that, leaving them to move into the sitting room even though Valira's ready to fall into bed herself.

“Tell me everything,” Valira says as soon as they're sitting on the sofa, Quil still not willing to be too far removed from her.

“It's just as I said in my letter.” Quil mops her face with a handkerchief before seeming to realize she wasn't actually crying with some surprise, which tells Valira more than she wants to know about how things have been. “Mrs. Starstriker wrote that Cordelia told her we had a family emergency and she'd arranged a ticket home on the stage and left, and that she hoped all was well. We'd just managed to get them word that there's no emergency when we got Cordelia's letter apologizing and saying she knew we wouldn't approve of her marriage but she's in love, and Mr. Loz has a good future in front of him.”

“And Trilli?”

“Has been hearing about their secret courtship for weeks and just thought it was a delightful confidence and not anything else. She handed over the letters, and we've read them, and it seems like he told Cordelia there were false accusations of cheating from the other students, so he had to leave, but couldn't stay away from her—he flirted with her while you and I were both gone, but no one thought anything of it. Apparently she did.”

Valira swallows a few times before she can speak. “This is my fault. I should have told Trilli and Cordelia what he is, damn what Arfil thought.”

Quil shakes her head. “He's a demon. Once he had Cordelia alone, he could have convinced her of anything, and convinced her not to tell Trilli, so we wouldn't even have had this many clues to work from. Arfil told me the same thing when I tried to say it.”

“Will Trilli forgive us for not telling her before, though? Will Cordelia, when they find her?”

Quil sighs. “I wish I knew.”

There are few more details than that, only Cordelia's letters, which Quil produces when Valira asks about them, but somehow talk about it takes up the next hour and a half without anything else coming up.

They're interrupted eventually by the sound of someone clattering down the stairs at speed, and Valira is on her feet a moment later and braced for Trilli's arms thrown around her waist like she's a little girl again, though as a little girl she couldn't rock Valira back on her heels by barreling into her. Trilli holds on, and whatever she's saying is muffled into Valira's shoulder, and Valira hears the sounds of Quil tactfully withdrawing a few seconds later. She doesn't know how to comfort Trilli for any of this, but she can hold on, and she does.

*

Kithri's gone again after a quick meal, a rapid interrogation of everyone who knows anything, and a Mending from Valira for one of her axles, which looks likely to crack according to the coachman.

In the wake of her carriage wheels, Valira goes up to see Constance, who hasn't been down to see her yet. Constance is sitting at her window, staring out sightlessly over the beautiful summer fields thick with wildflowers, her hair in disarray, and she looks like she hasn't slept since she heard the news, though she turns with a tremulous smile when she sees Valira. “I'm sorry, my dear, what a welcome home,” she murmurs when Valira sits on her bed. “We should all be asking you about your trip.”

“This is more important.” Valira twists her hands together. She's not very good at comfort, but Quil and Trilli are both exhausted and heartsore, and are respectively making a production of planning menus for the week and playing something loud and angry on the pianoforte, refusing her help, so she's come to try with Constance. “They'll find her. Arfil and Kithri are some of the most powerful magic users in the country.”

“It was luck I got her back once.” Constance sighs. “I believe in Arfil and Kithri, of course I do, but this is too familiar. She goes out on her own, goes exploring, and then there's a magical threat and nothing I can do.”

Valira casts about for something to say. “Nothing now, maybe. But when she comes back, she's going to need you. What good are Arfil and Kithri going to be at comforting her through nightmares? Much less me, or Trilli. At least Quil will be decent at it.”

Any other time, Constance might laugh. Now it's a miracle that Valira wins a sliver of a smile with that. “You'll do better than you might think.”

They sit there in silence until Quil comes to ask someone to please stop Trilli before she gives the whole household a headache, and Valira gets up to deal with that.

The next two days fall into an uneasy pattern. Kithri, now that she's settled in Hylene, prepares Sending and updates Constance as often as she can, though the news is never good, the trail lost in the city. They all wait at home, running through lists of distant acquaintances, wondering who might have a piece of the puzzle or the power to find them. Quil, with her shoulders stiff and her chin high, writes a formal plea of a note to the Windroses, asking if their time in the army taught them any tricks for dealing with demons and sends it, when Valira quietly corrects her on the address, to Belvale Park, but it's days away by the mail coach.

On the morning of the third day, Kithri's Sending says that Arfil is coming home to use the materials and tools in his lab, which might give him a clearer scry, and that he's coming with bad news, and all of them are thrown into panic. Constance retreats to her room, Quil sits in the sitting room with her eyes brimming with tears, and Trilli slams out of the house and starts stalking away through the garden.

Valira looks between them, torn, until Quil shakes her head. “Trilli needs you. I'll go up to my mother in a moment.”

“And who's going to comfort you?” Valira asks, already reaching for Trilli's bonnet, since she'll be annoyed about the sun in her eyes within a minute.

“Mama and I will just comfort each other,” Quil assures her, and makes shooing motions until Valira goes out.

It's easy to catch Trilli, who had years less of learning how to move silently and efficiently through nature than Valira did when they left, and who's always scoffed at Valira's offers to teach her, too busy with her music. Trilli stops like she's frozen as soon as Valira is within ten feet of her, and takes the bonnet Valira offers, jams it on her head and ties it and then turns to Valira with a scowl on her face. “You should have told us.”

“I know.”

“I think of how happy I was for her and I feel _sick_ , and you all would have known but you didn't trust us.” Trilli's fists clench. “If this kills her I'm never going to forgive any of you.”

“You're right. We should have told you, and she might have been safer if she knew. Arfil and Constance have reasons why not, but it could easily have gone wrong either way. I'm not going to blame you for being angry. But it's not a matter of trust.” Valira sits down in the grass. Quil can clean her dress later, but she can't shout this at Trilli in the middle of a field. “Sit down.”

For a moment, she thinks Trilli won't, that she'll storm off again and maybe eventually cool down, but always wonder if they don't trust her. Eventually, though, she sits, a lot more neatly than Valira, with a flick of her skirt to keep as much of it off the ground as possible. “How could it be anything but trust? You and Quil, when you were our age you were trusted with so much, but you insist on treating us like children.”

“Because you should have the chance to be,” Valira counters. “We're not an ordinary family, we never will be, but we're more stable now than we were when I was your age. We want you to be young and carefree and not have to worry about demons. We thought the worst had happened to both of you when you were so young, that maybe you'd had enough of a chance to recover and could just live.”

“We can be young and still know when we're in danger.”

“If we thought he was foolhardy enough to come near us again, we would have. I would have. I wanted to, but Arfil overruled me. I probably should have told you anyway.” Valira wonders what she would have wanted to hear, but she doesn't know how much of it she can honestly say when she's wretched with guilt over the whole situation. “I just wanted you to have a life without worry.”

“That's stupid,” Trilli says, in a tone she must have learned from Kithri. “It happened to me just like it happened to you, even if I don't remember it very well. I worry plenty already. Cordelia and I both get bad dreams sometimes still.”

Valira frowns at her. “I didn't know that. And I don't think Quil does either.”

“We protect you too,” Trilli says, shrugging.

Valira offers her hand, and eventually Trilli moves to take it. “They're going to bring her home,” Valira says, and tries to sound sure, tries to feel sure.

“They'd better,” says Trilli, “or I'm going to Hylene to find her myself.”

They sit there until Trilli complains that despite the bonnet she's going to get a sunburn on her nose, and then walk home to look after Constance and Quil and try to fill the hours before Arfil gets home.

*

Arfil comes an hour after sunset, and they all greet him at the door, none of them patient enough to wait for bad news. He doesn't make them wait, even as the servants bustle to take care of the carriage and luggage. “This doesn't mean the situation is hopeless,” he says, and Valira's stomach plummets. “Kithri knows more than a few tricks, and Idilus is still searching too, since his scrying is even better than mine. But they found Mr. Loz's body in an alley this morning.”

Constance staggers a step back, and they all reach for her automatically. “It's in Cordelia?” she asks, and her voice breaks, and all Valira can think of is Ewhoza's letter, the way it sounds like the real Mr. Loz died as quickly as a snuffed candle.

“We fear so, though we don't know for sure. While the search is still so active, it might have taken someone else temporarily, but she was close by and strong.” He looks at all of them, stricken and horrified. “Most people, when possessed, have a year or two, depending on the strength of their will. We all know Cordelia's will is strong.”

“She's so young,” says Constance, through tears.

“We'll find her, and we'll bring her home, no matter what it takes.” He shepherds them all inside, hanging up his hat and cloak as he goes. “And when she comes back, she and Trilli are both going to Idilus's school to learn shielding techniques, I don't care if she has magic or not.”

“Why should I have to do it? I have other magic to learn,” says Trilli, offended even when her voice is trembling. “I'm not the one in danger.”

“But if I'd let you go as you wanted to, you would have been.” He goes around all of them and kisses each of them on the forehead. “I need to go to my study and start working. I lost too much time traveling as it is.”

“What are you going to do?” Valira asks. Her voice sounds far away in her ears. She can remember the exhaustion Mr. Loz always brought on, how drained she felt. Cordelia may be feeling that now, but a hundred times worse, with a demon whispering in her head, not just taking her hand. “What can we do?”

“You can all prepare to bring her home,” he says, firm. “And I'm going to scry, but first I'm going to talk to an old friend.”

With that, he clasps Constance's hand once more and leaves them all as abruptly as he came, leaving them to comfort each other, too horrified to do anything but pick at their dinner and then sit, straining for any sounds from up in his study, until they can go to their rooms and pretend to sleep. Quil goes to sleep with Constance like they're children again, and Valira goes to Trilli's room and finds that Trilli has been sleeping on Cordelia's bed. She leaves her there, and sleeps on Trilli's own until it's morning and she can get up and ask Arfil for news.

*

They hardly see Arfil, but with him home, there's no pretending anything is normal. A few neighbors try to call, hearing the edges of scandal or just wanting to ask about Valira's trip, but they turn them all away. They aren't fit for visitors. There's a newsy letter from Frog, bragging of a tomato that won a prize at the local fair (as though he has any right to brag when she was the one who planted it) and saying that Sir Solomon asked after her by name, and she weeps over it, stupidly, glad for a sense that the world still moves on outside the walls of her home. There's a note back from the Windroses, just as formal as Quil's, saying they've reached out to a few avenues of help and hope they'll work out, and that any other service they can render will be done at Quil's request. Valira could almost smile over that, but it's hard to smile over anything.

It's nearly a week after Arfil's arrival before he comes crashing down the stairs an hour earlier for breakfast than he ever is with a wild grin on his face. “She's safe,” he says as soon as he's in the room, and Constance, who'd shot to her feet at the sound of him speeding through the house, collapses back into her chair again like threshed wheat while Trilli makes a high-pitched noise and Quil drops her spoon with a clatter.

“How? When?” Valira asks, standing up for no reason she can discern, just full of too much emotion to sit still.

“Kithri says she's alive and herself and safe, and she sent a letter with the dawn mail coach, but she doesn't have the magic to Send more so we have to wait.”

“Where's Cordelia?” Constance demands, sitting up straight, gaze clearer than it's been since Valira came home. “I need to see her, she needs me after that. Did Kithri put her on the mail coach too?”

“She'll need time to recover, whatever happened,” Arfil warns. “She won't be fit to travel for a week, and Kithri is the best person to care for her in the meantime. She knows the people who can help Cordelia best, and she'll be back with us as soon as she can be.”

“I'll go to Hylene,” she counters, standing with purpose. “You can't deny that. We'll wait for Kithri's letter, and unless there's a reason not to, I'll travel tomorrow.”

Arfil looks around at all of them. Quil's been shocked into silent tears, though there's a smile on her face, and Trilli is sitting, mouth agape, frozen in a picture of surprise. Valira doesn't know what her face is doing, but he smiles briefly when he looks at her. “We'll see what Kithri thinks is wise. She's the healer. But you're right, I can't imagine that having her mother close would do her any harm.”

Constance nods, satisfied that he won't stand in her way, though Valira suspects it's going to be more of a battle than that, and moves with more purpose than she has in a week, issuing orders to the household, already seeing to Cordelia's comfort when she comes back, leaving half the breakfast she was eating without enthusiasm sitting on her plate.

Valira reaches out to clasp Trilli's hand. “She's coming home.”

“She's okay,” says Trilli, high and breathless. “I didn't think—she's okay.”

Haoti Ewhoza, more than a year after he exorcised his demon, still isn't that, she suspects, and Cordelia may well have worse scars from this. That knowledge is on Arfil's face, and passes across Quil's too, but Valira isn't going to ruin Trilli's joy with that consideration. “She will be,” she says instead, and hopes Trilli will notice the distinction when she can think at all. After a moment, she turns to Arfil. “You get some sleep. I don't think you've slept since she went missing, and we can't do anything until we hear from Kithri, so you have the day to rest.”

Arfil gives her a brief smile. “You're right. I'm going to write a note to Idilus to let him know to call off the search, and then I'll do just that.”

“Is the demon dead?” Quil asks just as he turns around to leave the room, and he turns around, brows drawn together. “You said she's safe, but could it come back for her?”

He shakes his head. “There weren't many words, but she made it clear Cordelia isn't in danger, so it must be dead or permanently bound.”

“Good,” says Quil, and lets him go.

The rest of the day has a celebratory air that mostly feels like hysteria. Trilli goes out to pick wildflowers and comes back with a garden's worth and sets with single-minded ferocity to arranging them and making a wreath to hang on Cordelia's bed, though Valira suspects it will take magical help from her to preserve them until Cordelia returns. Constance goes into a flurry of organization, reminding the cook of all of Cordelia's favorite meals and ordering them served as soon as Cordelia comes home, sparing no cost for ingredients. Quil has three magic surges before dinner and has to wake Arfil up for a ward to calm her magic when the third one summons a unicorn that knocks over three delicate things in the sitting room before disappearing again.

Valira floats through the house with a sense of increasing unreality, unable to settle on one activity or another, trying to help everyone else as she can but mostly finding herself standing still in one place or another with no idea how long she's been there. More than once, she ends up in front of her writing desk, wondering if she should write to Major Ewhoza, telling him that the demon who plagued him and killed his childhood companion is dead. It's an impossible letter to write, much less send, but he deserves to know, and she doesn't know how else he would get the news, when they're all trying so hard not to tell the public what happened. Maybe if Quil writes the Windroses again, they'll tell him.

When the mail arrives, rushed over by a girl from the village office when she sees the express frank Kithri paid for it, they all fall on it like a pack of wolves, and Constance emerges victorious. She doesn't read it out loud, just skims through the page, eyes wide and horrified, before she hands it to Arfil, who reads it carefully and with a frown. Quil and Trilli read it together, shoulder to shoulder, when he's done, Trilli making little hurt noises every once in a while and Quil silent, paling with each word.

They're all already talking in a mess of words and leftover fear by the time Valira takes it.

_She's alive,_ it begins, Kithri's practicality putting the most important news first. _She was herself when I found her, but not in enough control that she could seek help, and I exorcised the demon, which turned out to be a babau. It was a battle after that, but all turned out well. Cordelia will need care from some healing orders for a few weeks before she goes home, not because she was injured but because it takes time and talk to recover from a demon in your head even for a few days. I've had to pledge a few bribes to make authorities forget about everything, but they shouldn't be too much to pay. I'll send a reckoning with the next post._ She goes on to talk about finding Cordelia in the empty house of one of Mr. Loz's old school friends who's out of Hylene and at the coast for the summer, after tracking down some of those likely locations, and about everything Cordelia said after they found her, which is mostly that she's sorry and wants to come home and hopes they'll forgive her.

“What do you think?” she asks Arfil when she looks up, talking over the chaos that's risen up while she read.

“I think it must have been more of a battle than Kithri implies,” he says, sober. “She wouldn't lie about Cordelia's danger, but she might about her own, and she mentions the kind of demon it was. I've never known a babau to die easily, though it's been a long time since one was seen on this plane.”

“We'll never be able to thank her enough,” says Quil, shaking her head, and then it's a chorus of gratitude and rereading the letter, not that there's much in it. Kithri's letters are always as brusque as she is in person, glossing over anything she doesn't want to talk about, and there's a lot to avoid when talking about a demon.

Valira leaves everyone else while they're all sufficiently distracted and slips away into the fresh air, which always helps when her feelings are in a tumult, staring up at the clouds from her garden. Cordelia is safe, even if there's a long road ahead of her. At least they haven't doomed her by keeping secrets, and she'll someday recover. She wonders if Major Ewhoza got any of the counseling Cordelia is, and suspects he didn't, that what recovery he's managed he's made alone, or with the help of friends who didn't understand exactly what he was recovering from.

“All well?” Arfil asks from behind her, and smiles at her when she turns. His long nap has restored him to only looking as exhausted and vague as he usually does, though he's still a lot more tense than usual. “Everyone else has decided to help Constance pack, she'll get on the stage tomorrow if Kithri Sends again and I get her approval. Or perhaps even if I don't.”

“I'll help them in a moment.” She hesitates, but everyone else will think to ask within a day or two. “How hard a battle would it have been? I don't know anything about demons.”

“You and Quil should learn about them too, if they're starting to come back to the world, though I won't force you to go to school like I will the girls. You can study from my books, I trust you to pay attention without someone standing over you.” He pauses, and looks up at the clouds. She joins him. If he doesn't want to meet her eyes during this, she doesn't want to meet his either. “If she was alone? I'm surprised she survived. And she hasn't said she had help, so I fear she put her life in very real danger for us. Quil is right, we'll owe her forever. More than we can possibly repay, not that she'll hear of that. She won't want to talk about it at all, if I know her. And she won't let us thank her.”

“We'll find a way,” says Valira.

There's a smile in his voice when he answers. “I think we all will find one. She'd do it for anyone, as a Wandering Warden, but that doesn't mean her friends shouldn't celebrate her.”

*

Constance, with Kithri's begrudging permission, leaves the next day and leaves them all in a state of nervous anticipation, the last remnants of panic and fear turned into restlessness. Cordelia's first letter arrives only hours after Constance leaves, a few shaky lines of apology and love addressed to all of them, and they all write back in a mess of different smudges of handwriting, assuring her they love her and that they can't wait to see her.

In the next few days, with daily letters from Cordelia or Kithri or Constance, depending on who feels best that day, they try to take up their lives again. Valira goes back to her garden, harvesting what she had time to plant and planting autumn crops, and she and Quil go to town and visit their friends, where she talks about her journey and they don't talk about Cordelia except to say she was taken ill and is recovering in Hylene with her mother. She tells Arfil that she's enough of an old maid to escort Trilli to a musical evening at Mrs. Zanaram's house, where she hears all the latest news about Frog. Trilli, grudgingly, goes to a few classes on magical defense and demon recognition at Idilus's, where all the apprentices immediately fall in love with her, which she claims is the only good thing about it, though Valira catches her writing a song to help her remember the different classes of demon.

Valira studies them herself, in Arfil's books, but mostly studies the aftermath of possession, when someone is lucky enough to survive it. All of them talk about the difficulty, the sleepless nights, the guilt, the words demons slip in like poison, and she thinks of Cordelia but just as much of Haoti Ewhoza, who didn't tell anyone about it and didn't seek help.

“What are you thinking about?” Quil asks when she finds her in their room one afternoon, reading another account, decoding the archaic language and handwriting, because it's been many years since anyone's been possessed by a demon in their country and told anyone about it.

“Ewhoza,” she says, and Quil sits down on the end of her bed with an open-handed gesture to encourage her. “He went through it too. I just wonder what it was like for him.” She sighs and shuts the book. “And I keep thinking I should write him, or ask Arfil to. He deserves to know Mr. Loz is dead. The demon is dead. I feel awful for the real Mr. Loz, that we're using his name for the demon.”

“You never told me much about seeing him,” Quil offers, a little hesitant, and Valira talks about Belvale Park, the house and the grounds, and about Miss Denrathy, who he taught how to gamble, and the portrait of his family, until her voice cracks and she realizes how long she was talking. Quil, though, just smiles at her. “He's not so bad, then?”

“I don't know.” His sabotage of Quil's match is the last secret she can't bring herself to confide, when it will hurt Quil for no good reason and when the Windroses could still reconsider, but he still did it, and that, unlike awkwardness and coldness, can't be written off as the effects of demonic possession, just like his disapproval of their family can't. “I honestly don't. But I know that it helped to be able to tell him when your letter about Cordelia came.”

Quil hums thoughtfully and then stands up, a smile on her face. “That's what I came in here to talk to you about, actually. There was a letter from Mama, and she and Cordelia are coming home in a week. I thought maybe we should start planning their welcome celebration.”

Valira smiles and lets herself forget about Ewhoza and lets Quil drag her off to collect Trilli so the three of them can plan a party that will be welcoming without being overwhelming, though she suspects it will take them the whole week to strike the right balance.

*

Cordelia and Constance come home in Kithri's carriage, which doesn't have Kithri inside it. Constance, when she gets out, is still glowing with relief and joy, and Cordelia is smiling when Constance helps her down, but she looks around hungrily, at all of their faces and at the house, like she had forgotten what it all looked like and needs to remind herself.

A second later, whatever she needs reminding of, the rest of them mob her, all a tangle of arms and skirts and emotions and words, a hundred things being said and discarded too fast to care about. Even Arfil, who often stands away a little for such things, wraps his arms around as many of them as he can reach and holds on before extracting Cordelia from their clutches and installing her on the sofa with her feet up, so all of them have to draw up chairs instead of sitting next to her.

They all want to be close to her, but she looks fragile, with a blanket in her lap despite the late summer heat, and from Constance's protective shake of the head when Trilli opens her mouth, she doesn't want to talk much about her ordeal. Instead, Trilli talks about all the local gossip, and Valira about her trip, and Quil about the spell she's been trying to experiment with, and it all feels a little false, but it feels good as well, and right to have the whole family together again.

Valira suspects, though, that Cordelia could do without some of the family togetherness, since she's not alone for a moment that she can tell for the next few days, whether the whole family is sitting with her, or whether someone is spiriting her away to be alone with them for a few moments. She hears Trilli and Cordelia whispering late into the night, and knows she's walking with Quil most mornings and sitting with Arfil most afternoons, working on meditation techniques Kithri taught her, and that Constance fills in moments in between.

She doesn't see much of Cordelia alone, but that makes sense. They're not as close, not tied together by blood or by age, the same way Quil and Trilli talk a bit less than the rest of them. And on top of that, Valira is the one who brought Mr. Loz's notice on Cordelia, so she's not expecting a serious conversation with her for some time, which is why she's shocked after three days when Cordelia comes out while she's pulling weeds from her pumpkin bed and sits in the soil next to her, immediately turning her face up to the sun like a cat looking for the best place to nap and closing her eyes.

“I owe you an apology,” Valira says, hating to ruin her moment of contentment but knowing she can't start anywhere else. “I should have told you he was a demon, and it's my fault it turned to you anyway, after I exposed it.”

Cordelia shakes her head, though she doesn't open her eyes, just letting the sun play across her face. “You don't. It was in my head, remember? It … it was delighted at how many rich options there were around it. The mastery students were too much of a risk, especially with Arfil so close, but the four of us were intriguing enough that even Arfil couldn't hold it off forever. Maybe it was angry at you, but it wanted me. It could smell the Nine Hells on me, from when Quil and I were there.”

“I would kill it again if I could,” she says, and has to take a breath to calm herself. “Still, I'm sorry. You deserved to know.”

“Next time you'll tell us,” she says, and opens her eyes to look at Valira. “I don't blame you. Not any more than I blame myself, or Arfil, or Haoti. It was all the demon's fault.”

Valira nearly reels back at the unexpected name, especially when Cordelia's eyes widen as soon as she realizes what she said. “Haoti? Major Haoti Ewhoza?”

“Will you forget that I said that? I promised.”

She doesn't want to ask Cordelia to break a promise, but she can't imagine leaving it there either. “I can't forget it. I can ask Kithri, though, if you want. I don't want to make you break your word.”

Cordelia sits with that for a few moments before she finally nods and looks down, picking at a loose thread on her skirt. “It was a stupid promise. And I think you should know, after—I know there are a few things about him you didn't tell Trilli and me, but we pay attention.”

“I've learned that the hard way these past few weeks,” says Valira, and sighs. “He proposed when I was visiting Frog, even more insultingly than Mr. Bel did, if you can imagine. And I was still defending Mr. Loz then, and I suspect you heard him talk about the major.”

“I did. That … well, it explains a little more.” There's a twitch at the corner of her mouth that Valira wants to see turn into a laugh, even if it's at her expense, because Cordelia hasn't laughed since she's come home, but she doesn't push. “You really should know, then. He's the one who killed the demon. Well, he's the one who found me—us, both of us in me. He led Kithri to us. And then when she got it out of me he killed it.”

Kithri is a cleric of many years' standing, wily and powerful, and Arfil worried that a babau could have killed her. “How?” she asks, when she can manage the word.

“I don't know, I was mostly insensible, and I know Kithri got a few blows in, but she was healing me and him both at once so she couldn't attack it. I think it was just Haoti and his sword and his determination then.” Cordelia fidgets a little more with her skirt. Valira will have to cast Mending before they go inside, it's too new a dress to need replacing so soon. “I think … I think he almost died. He was in the hospital longer than I was, even with Kithri and the other clerics taking care of him, and his cousin was terrified when she came, though I don't think she'd ever say so.”

“You got to know him there?” she asks, proud of how steady her voice comes out, needing not to scare Cordelia out of her honest mood.

“I went to thank him, of course, and he said—well, he said not to tell anyone, or you, because he didn't want anyone to feel indebted, and he said you were the one who told him what was happening and that you might take responsibility and that he didn't want that.”

“Did he say why?”

“He said it was his responsibility, that he'd woken the demon in the first place and hadn't reported it to the proper authorities or kept good track of it, and that he owed the world that. And you, and me, and the poor dead real Mr. Loz.”

Valira expects to be surprised at that show of honor, or skeptical, and finds within a surprised second that she isn't at all. A man who cares for his cousin, who drags his land back from the brink of bad management, who is honest with a woman who hurts him deeply, has honor. It doesn't fit with the picture of him as a sneering man who lets wealth and blood dictate his company and choices, but that picture has been false from its first moment. He's never been perfect, but he's always been honorable. And this time, he's saved her sister, and doesn't want thanks. Doesn't even want her to know, in fact. “He'll recover?” she asks, and busies herself with the garden while Cordelia thinks.

“Yes,” she says at last. “He was already up and nearly back to normal by the time I left. If I thought he might die, I would have told you before, I think. And for the rest of it … he'll recover as fast as I will, probably. When I told him I was nervous what the counselors would say, he went with me for the first few days.”

Valira closes her eyes and wishes him fiercely well for a moment, wishes him the healing he's allowed Cordelia, some ease and freedom and happiness. It's the least he deserves, for this and for the other things he does to try to be good. “I'm glad. I'm so glad you had his company, and that he saved you. I don't know if I'll ever see him again, but if I do, I'll have to thank him.”

“You shouldn't,” says Cordelia. “I told you against his will, remember? But I'm glad, I—I know that it wasn't just Mr. Loz, he was so rude to you, and if he was rude when he proposed that's even worse, so disliking him is justified, but he saved me, so I hate the thought of you hating him.”

“I don't hate him,” Valira assures her, and takes her hand. “And this erases a lot of rudeness. Believe me, I'll be thinking of him fondly after this.”

“Good.” Cordelia kisses her on the cheek and stands up, brushing the dirt off her skirt. “Don't tell anyone else? Maybe I'll tell them someday, but he did ask, and I know you can keep secrets.”

Valira hates keeping secrets from her family, already has one too many with the knowledge she has of the last piece of anger for Haoti that she holds on to, but this one isn't her secret. “It's yours to tell.”

“Thank you,” says Cordelia. “I'm going to go for a walk, because if Mama starts almost crying over me one more time I may scream. Don't tell anyone where I've gone, will you?”

Valira laughs. “That's a much easier secret to keep. Try to be back in an hour? I can only hold them off so long.”

There's a huff of a laugh at that, just a shade of Cordelia's usual free giggles, but it's a beginning, and Valira beams after her as she goes, and cheerfully lies to Constance when she comes out casually asking after her ten minutes later. There are no other interruptions, and she spends the whole session of weeding pondering what Haoti did, and wondering just what his reasons were.

*

Cordelia does better day by day as the summer winds to a calm and beautiful close. Sometimes she looks blankly out a window, hearing a voice that isn't hers, but she practices meditation, and speaks by magic with a counselor in Hylene, and seems enough like herself within a few weeks to start going to Idilus's school with Trilli to learn about demons, and to go to a harvest dance with the rest of them only a week or two after that, though she doesn't dance as much as usual, and Trilli stays to the side of the room with her.

Valira feels stupidly giddy, with something close to normalcy restored, and dances far more often than she usually does, smiling when Miss Keene tells her she looks well without anything like flirtation, since she's apparently leaving soon to join the navy and dancing with an endless succession of Frog's younger siblings. Bel, the next oldest, is the last and is bursting with gossip. “Do you know what I just heard?” she asks as they begin the figures.

“I couldn't guess,” says Valira, and hopes that there are no rumors about what truly happened to Cordelia. They all agree that no one needs to know more than that Cordelia was ill, that she can be apart from Idilus and Arfil's gentle admonitions to the town to read up on demons, that at least one nest has been found in the past few years and they should be on their mettle. In the past, people haven't been kind to the possessed, and none of them want that for Cordelia.

“Well, my mother says that she heard from the reverend that _he_ heard it from the steward at Fairpoint Hold that the Windroses are coming back.”

Valira makes an egregious misstep, and is only saved from giving herself away because Bel's always been a terrible dancer. “Are they? I was beginning to wonder if they planned to.”

“Only a few weeks, it seems, perhaps because it's shooting season, and I think their brothers are staying in town this time, but I hope they'll attend assemblies while they're here! We could use the variety in the company.”

“So we could,” Valira agrees, and only barely makes it through the rest of the dance with dignity, busy thinking about what this could mean for Quil, if it means anything for Quil, and if they know about what Haoti did and why he did it.

By the time the evening is over and she finds Quil again, it's obvious that Quil has heard, because of how determined she is to act like she hasn't. She's practically skipping, winding the girls up into talking about who they'd like to dance with the next time, teasing her mother for dancing with Mrs. Zanaram's visiting sister, and generally pretending nothing could be wrong.

All of them know her too well to believe her, but it's clear that she doesn't plan to talk about it, so they all indulge it, and Valira waits until they've all retired to their rooms and climbed into bed before she brings it up, whispered in the dark as all her confidences with Quil tend to be. “Will you be okay?”

“I knew them for a few months at most, and haven't seen them in much, much longer than that,” Quil says, so fast that she must have been planning it. “I'll be polite, and they'll be polite, and in a few weeks they'll leave and that will be that.”

“Maybe they've changed their minds,” says Valira. She's been hoping it ever since she talked to them, and it seems hopeful, them showing up without company. Maybe she's just wishing, but seeing them made it clear where their affections are. She just has to see if they can overcome their fears.

Quil is silent for a long time. “Please don't get my hopes up,” she finally says, and there's so much pain in the whisper that Valira doesn't have the heart to press, and just clasps Quil's hand before letting them both get the rest they need.

*

The whole town knows when the Windroses come back. Arfil comes back from Idilus's school, the girls in tow, and for once they aren't quiet or sulking about their extra lessons, but bubbling with gossip, saying Fairpoint Hold is open and they seem to be settling in at least for a few weeks, though it's not known yet if they intend to hold a party. When they leave Valira and Quil alone and go to share the news with Constance, Arfil stays.

“I don't plan to call on them unless you ask me to,” he tells Quil. “Then if they call it's their own choice, but they aren't likely to without the tacit invitation. Is that what you want?”

“Yes,” says Quil, though her voice wobbles. “There's no reason we should be showing each other special attention. If they come, they come, but you have other things to do.”

Arfil doesn't look completely satisfied, but he leaves them be, and Valira takes one look at Quil's face and doesn't ask. They all spend the few days that follow pretending everything is normal, which it would be if it didn't feel so obviously like pretending.

After three days, Trilli comes running pell-mell into the house barely five minutes after leaving for a walk. “Struck by inspiration already?” Valira asks, preparing for a session of loud pianoforte music, but instead of diving for the instrument, Trilli is putting the sitting room into order, something Valira has never known her to do in her life.

“The Windroses are coming down the lane!” she says when they all stare at her. “And I thought they were alone, but Major Ewhoza is with them!”

That electrifies all of them when they were previously enjoying a quiet family afternoon. The house is neat and they're at home to callers, so there isn't much to do with their sudden energy, only Trilli plumping cushions that are already plumped and Constance and Cordelia engaging in a furious spate of whispers before Cordelia runs up to tell Arfil they have company. Valira looks at Quil to find her transfixed in the middle of the room like she's considering an escape upstairs with a sudden indisposition but can't muster the words.

“Need to leave?” Valira asks her.

As she might have guessed, that just firms Quil's mouth and makes her stand up straight. “That would be foolish. They're our neighbors.” She lowers her voice. “I don't know why they brought Major Ewhoza, though. Will you be well?”

Valira is still keeping Cordelia's secrets, so the answer to that is much more complicated than she wishes it were. At least Quil knows it's far more complicated than it was before she visited Belvale Park, but his near sacrifice, his refusal to take credit, add another layer to everything. “I will,” she says, and they're interrupted by Trilli telling Quil to stand in front, since it's clear who they're coming for, just as Cordelia comes clattering down the stairs again, full of more energy than Valira has seen from her in weeks, calling that Arfil says they can take the call themselves.

It's less than a minute until there's a knock on the door, and they're all much more discomposed than they would have been if Trilli hadn't warned them by the time it comes. Instead of sitting lazily on their various seats, no notion that a knock at the door could bring so much awkwardness, they're all standing, nervous and jumpy, and the two youngest are both glowing with the exertion that their panic brought on.

When they arrive in the room, though, the three of them look just as anxious. Terry's hair is practically on end, Phi spends five seconds with her eyes fixed on Quil and then can't seem to look at her, and Major Ewhoza is staring with determined energy at some point well above anyone's head. Constance, after a worried look at the frozen tableau that turns into a twitch of a smile, steps forward first. “Welcome, do come in. We're honored you called. Can we offer you tea?”

“That sounds lovely,” says Terry with undisguised relief, and there's an awkward moment while everyone tries to arrange the seating to their own satisfaction, which means everyone is working at cross purposes. “I hope we aren't intruding,” he continues when they're all sitting, Quil packed onto a sofa between Trilli and Cordelia like they think she needs protecting, with the Windroses on a loveseat not far away, Valira and Major Ewhoza and Constance scattered around in chairs safely alone.

It's clear he's addressing Quil more than anyone else, but Quil is busy attempting to win a bit more space to sit, so Valira speaks up before the silence can get worse. “We're always pleased to see neighbors. I'd heard you were coming. Lanra's well? And the rest of your family, Phi?”

“Yes,” says Phi, and seems to shake off her worries in favor of a smile. “Yes, thank you for asking. Lanra sends his best, but he had a better offer for where to spend his time, or so he says.”

“How long will you be here?” Trilli asks, with an attempt at being casual that fails miserably.

The Windroses exchange a look. “We haven't decided yet,” Terry eventually says. “I suppose we'll have to see.”

“And you, Major Ewhoza?” Cordelia asks. If Valira didn't know, she wouldn't see the flicker of a smile he gives her, or hear anything but politeness in Cordelia's voice. She knows how to keep secrets very well, it seems. “We hadn't heard you were coming.”

“We invited him at the last minute,” says Phi, and gives him something like a frown, leaving Valira to wonder what he has and hasn't told his friends.

“I plan to leave my hosts to their own devices soon enough,” he says. He still seems more interested in the details of the wallpaper than in looking at any of them. “But it's a nice part of the country here, and my steward assured me I could be spared a few more weeks. I'll be glad to return to Belvale Park, though. Did you enjoy your visit, Miss Linnaeus?”

“Very much,” she says, and is relieved to launch into a discussion of the estate and its grounds with him and with Cordelia listening in while Constance gently leads the rest of them in a discussion of local events, leaving out Cordelia's ordeal but talking pleasantly about parties and the new shop in the village and other inconsequential, easy things.

There's only so long casual callers can stay, even if they only sip at their tea, and Valira can tell they're lingering, but that there's no easy way for the Windroses to try to focus their attention on Quil with the whole family there. Constance catches Valira's eye, noticing what she does, as they finally reluctantly stand up, and turns to them with a determined smile. “If the three of you would care to come to dinner in three days' time, you'd be welcome. Arfil would be happy to see you, I know, and I think Idilus is coming to dinner as well, he usually does that evening. It will be a nice little party, if you care to spend nights out when you seem to be here for a quiet retreat.”

“We'd never turn down a meal at your table,” Terry says, his face lightening up into a smile. “Three days? We'll make sure nothing takes us away—or at least Phi and I will. Haoti, can we prevail on you to stay that long?”

Valira is glad his proposal to her, anyway, is something of an open secret in her family, because his look directly at her is telling, and her hint of a nod back just as much so, but she can't do anything else, and maybe at dinner she'll have time to thank him for what he did for Cordelia. He won't want her thanks, but not giving them is unthinkable, if she has the chance. “I could be convinced,” he says, and the three of them part with warmer goodbyes than their hellos were.

All of them wait until they see them well down the garden path before they speak, though they collapse into seats as soon as the door shuts behind them. “Mama, you didn't need to invite them to dinner,” says Quil right away. “After that call, I can't imagine trying to make a whole evening of pleasant conversation!”

“The worst should be over with,” Valira offers, though she hardly believes it herself. “And they wanted to come, you can't deny that.”

“I can and I will!” says Quil, sitting up and giving her an offended look. “Anything that was between us is over, they made that clear last year. I don't know what else to say.”

“We're just having some neighbors to dinner,” Constance says, entirely serene, and then frowns at Valira. “I do wish I hadn't had to invite Major Ewhoza, though. I know that your relations haven't been friendly in the past. Will you be all right?”

“I will,” Valira says, and makes sure not to look at Cordelia. “He's their friend. Whatever's happened between us before, we can spend one night remembering that.”

*

It seems as though they all hold their breath through the next three days. There's nothing to bring them together with the denizens of Fairpoint Hold in between, no assemblies or trips to the village, so they're left with only a very strange visit to think over while they wait for dinner. Valira almost envies the girls their continued trips to Idilus's school to learn about demons. Trilli, it seems, has taken to sitting in on some other classes with the apprentices, honing her latent magical talent into something more powerful, while Cordelia goes with grim determination through more and more advanced books about demons, protecting herself as well as she knows how.

Valira goes out in the fields as much as she can, taking care of the fall crops and the last of the harvest of everything else, and checks in on Quil as often as Quil will let her, which isn't very. Her swirl of thoughts about Major Ewhoza doesn't go away, and she can't explain them to Quil, so in a fit of desperation, she spills them in a letter to Frog: the changes in her assumptions, what he did for Cordelia, the clear signs that he's a much better man than she thought at first, and her horrified feeling that she made the wrong choice telling him she wouldn't marry him. She almost doesn't send it, reading it over and wincing at it, but she sends it anyway, because Frog is always honest with her, and if he thinks she's being a fool he'll tell her so.

On the night of the dinner, they all manage much more composure than they did during the call. Cordelia is almost bouncing with poorly-hidden excitement, and Trilli seems ready to leap to anyone's defense on a moment's notice. Constance is serene, playing hostess with aplomb and with an iron hand on the seating arrangements, and Arfil is, after sighing and shaking his head, ignoring them all in favor of talking about spell variants with Idilus, who always arrives hours early for dinner just so the two of them can spend time together without students bothering them.

Valira, a few minutes before the rest of the guests are meant to arrive, takes Quil aside. “Don't shut them out,” she says, and Quil frowns at her. “You'll convince yourself all hope is gone, and it isn't. I saw them not long ago, remember? They hadn't forgotten you, and then you wrote them for help and suddenly here they are.”

“This is their home, or one of them. They don't need a reason to visit.”

“I'm not telling you to open yourself up to heartbreak. Just … let yourself make a few assumptions, and if you like the direction things are going in, show it.”

“That's exactly what you're telling me, then,” says Quil, looking away.

Valira's always been bad with her words, when they really matter. She can tell a tale that will have people spinning around in circles for the fun of it, she can make polite conversation and light flirting and show her affection to her family, but in this, the difficult things, she's lost more often than not. “Have a little more faith in yourself than that,” she says at last. “Just for one night, let yourself believe in happiness.”

“You really think there's a chance?” Quil asks.

“I don't think they would have come calling if there weren't,” says Valira, thinking of how she scolded them, told them it was cruel to get Quil's hopes up and then leave. If they didn't want her, they would have had a polite conversation at an assembly, maybe a dance or two, and let that be the end of it. But they're seeking her out, hoping for more time in her company, and they aren't cruel. “If at the end of tonight I think they can't be brought to the mark, I'll tell you. I promise.”

“I'll hold you to it,” Quil says, and fusses with Valira's hair, which is escaping its pins, until Constance calls them down with the news that their guests are coming up the lane.

This time, they're all prepared, and Valira could almost laugh over the difference it makes. No one is flustered or out of breath or fighting to arrange the seating. Instead, they're all looking their best, the Windroses dressed just a shade too well for a dinner with country neighbors, and Constance keeps the party well in hand, only leaving them to talk for a few minutes before sending them to their seats, which they've all been prepared for. That means Quil doesn't give her mother a pained look at being seated to Terry's right, with Phi on his other side, and Valira doesn't mind being next to Idilus, with Major Ewhoza seated between the girls.

Idilus talks to Valira for the first course, but his attention naturally reverts to Arfil after that, and Constance is busy watching Quil's progress with the Windroses, so Valira watches the rest of the table. Trilli alternates boredom with watching Quil avidly. Cordelia and Major Ewhoza have a few low-voiced and subtle exchanges when Trilli isn't paying attention, which leaves them both smiling.

Phi and Terry are deliberate and attentive with Quil, asking her questions and sharing stories, solicitous to the point of ridiculousness. Valira wonders at one point if they're going to cut her roast for her before Phi, her hand halfway out to take the plate, seems to realize how foolish that is. Quil, for her part, throws Valira a few suspicious looks, but she smiles back, tells them stories in her turn, encourages them to talk about those of Phi's brothers she hasn't met. As dinner progresses, the smiles between all of them get easier and the conversation quieter, until they're practically whispering. Valira looks at Constance, and then at Trilli, and all of them exchange looks of quiet delight.

With three people at the table whispering and two talking magical theory, though, the volume of conversation drops almost to the point of silence, and Valira meets Major Ewhoza's eyes before it can get that far. “How's Miss Denrathy?” she asks, even if she means _I'm surprised she let you out of her sight after you almost died._

“Well. Spending a few weeks with her mother's side of the family. She asks to be remembered to you, though, and wishes you'd been able to attend that dinner.”

“It was unfortunate. I was sorry to miss out on knowing her better. She seems interesting.”

“Yes.” He frowns, seeming to consider his words. “It's a shame she's not here. She and Miss Cordelia and Miss Trillium would all get along well, I imagine.”

Like a house on fire, no doubt, a somewhat horrifying thought, but Valira smiles anyway. “They would. Perhaps someday they'll have the luck.”

“Perhaps,” he says, and there's a tentative smile on his face too, before he turns to Constance and asks her a question about Kithri's love of recipe books and if any of her recipes are on the table for dinner, shying away from more conversation with Valira, which stupidly stings.

She wants to seek him out after dinner, when Arfil and Idilus withdraw up to Arfil's study and the rest of them withdraw for light entertainment, which mostly means Cordelia and Trilli playing duets, Trilli because she loves to and Cordelia because Constance asks her, and Constance hasn't asked much of her since her return. Valira expects Phi and Terry to monopolize Quil, and to be left trying to get rid of Constance just for long enough to thank Haoti for what he did, but to her surprise, he seeks Quil out first in her seat by the window, and the Windroses let him.

Constance frowns over at that corner, and then at the Windroses, but doesn't interfere, just goes to turn pages for Trilli.

That leaves Valira and the Windroses staring at each other, at a bit of a loss, and all of them trying not to look at what's happening in the corner, where Quil and Haoti are talking low-voiced, he with his head bowed and she with a frown on her face that's growing deeper and deeper. “Is all well?” Phi asks at last. “Haoti didn't tell us much, and Quil only shared the barest details, but we worried, and wished there was more we could do.”

“The crisis is over,” she assures them. “There's recovering to do, but we worked it out.” She hesitates. “How much did he tell you about himself?”

Terry frowns. “Not enough, but it was easy to see when we arrived in Hylene that something had gone badly for him. It's why we invited him. Why? Is that related?”

Valira regrets mentioning it. “It's not my secret.”

“Then we won't ask,” says Phi, and they exchange a look. “We owe you our thanks.”

Valira shakes her head. “I was inexcusably rude. I can't say I'll apologize and mean it, but I at least know I shouldn't be thanked for it.”

“You should,” Terry says, firm. “We would have regretted it forever, and you and a few other things gave us the reminder that some things are worth not giving up on easily.”

By the window, Quil and Haoti are still talking intensely, and Valira knows Quil well enough to know that however hard she's trying not to show anything, she's angry. “You don't owe me thanks,” she says, “but you might owe someone else an apology.”

Phi's answer comes fast enough to be reassuring. “When we have privacy, we intend to give one.”

“Then that's all the thanks I need,” says Valira, just in time to catch sight of Haoti standing and giving Quil a little bow before leaving her free. The Windroses at least have the grace to look torn, but Valira laughs and waves them off. “Go on, I'll find something else to do.”

Even when she's alone, he doesn't approach her, just sits and watches the performance, close enough to be friendly and far enough not to invite conversation. She wants to be annoyed, when she needs so badly to thank him, but he seems to be watching Cordelia in particular with a faint smile, and she can't begrudge that, after what they went through together.

It ends up an early evening. From the looks on Quil and the Windroses' faces, their private conversation was emotional, and it seems to leave them exhausted, and the second they show signs, Major Ewhoza takes the excuse to start moving the party out the door, and it's not long before they're walking back up the garden path, a lantern to light their way, leaving the rest of them exhausted and, overall, pleased.

Valira feels a little dissatisfied, but she can't tell anyone about that, so she agrees with everyone saying it's a lovely evening, everything too delicate for deeper analysis than that, until it's time to get some rest.

Quil is quiet and thoughtful as they get ready for bed, but she doesn't say anything until their candle is blown out. “Major Ewhoza apologized to me tonight,” she finally says into the quiet, her voice just neutral enough that Valira can't read it. “He seemed surprised that I didn't know what he was apologizing for at first.”

“But he explained?”

“He did. He said you knew.”

“Sir Solomon told me, and it was one of the reasons I refused his suit, but it would have broken your heart to know, and I couldn't do that.”

Quil is silent for just long enough that Valira knows she's going to be angry for at least a little while for that secret, but that Valira's reasons were true so she won't exact an apology. Valira will give her one anyway, but Quil's already had enough apologies tonight. “He said that he thought I didn't really like them,” she says. “And they believed him? They apologized too, a little, but still, I—it's hard to believe, I felt like the whole town knew.”

“So did I. I hope they understand you better now.” Valira sighs, but Quil deserves the worst of this, now that they've started telling her. “I don't think it was just worrying about your affections.”

“I know. He said that too. All his worries about his friends being too close to potential scandal, and how sure he was that we would provide it.” There's a silence. “I don't know if I can forgive him for this, even if he is one of their best friends.”

“He's the one who killed the demon,” Valira says before she can think better of it. It's Cordelia's secret to tell, and she thinks Cordelia would have told everyone eventually, but she can't bear the thought of Quil hating Haoti when he's the one who brought Cordelia home. He deserves her anger, but the atonement he chose, even aside from apologizing, is one Quil deserves to know about.

“What?”

“Cordelia let it slip, and swore me to secrecy, because he asked her not to tell, so we wouldn't feel indebted, but he killed it.” Valira swallows. “He almost died saving her, and then he attended counseling with her when she was frightened. He's not perfect, I know he isn't, but … he did this, and even aside from it, I've come to understand that however much he blunders, however unpleasant he is, he's _good_. He cares about things. And he … he cares about us. About Cordelia, and doing his duty, and you, because his friends care about you.”

Quil is silent for a long time. “And you,” she finally says. “He seems to care about you.”

“Months ago, he thought he did,” says Valira, and she feels bleak and hollowed-out and ready, suddenly, to cry. “I hope, for your sake and Phi and Terry's, we can be friends, because I think you can agree my optimism was warranted now, but that's all.”

“Maybe,” Quil says. “If he really did kill that demon … I can't imagine what we owe him.”

“I want to thank him. I owe him that. But I couldn't get a chance tonight, not without embarrassing him and Cordelia both.”

“We all owe him that, whether or not I dislike him.”

“I hope you give him a chance.”

Quil sighs. “Oh, Valira,” she says, quiet and a little pitying, and Valira's cheeks flame in the dark. Quil doesn't push, though, just changes the subject to her talks with Terry and Phi, how well they went, how kind they were, how she's finding herself hoping more and more, until she falls asleep murmuring about hoping they stop by again soon.

*

They stop by the next day, in fact, just the two of them. “It's a beautiful day for a walk,” says Terry when they arrive, after the pleasantries have been exchanged. “Would anyone care to take one?”

It's not a request to speak to Constance or Arfil, but Quil still smiles, and after so long apart, and such a short courtship the first time, Valira can't say it's a bad idea for them to get to know each other again. So, before Cordelia or Trilli can say that a walk sounds lovely so they can spy or interfere, she stands up. “I would. Quil, would you?”

Quil turns just far enough to give Valira the full force of the roll of her eyes before she turns to the Windroses. “A walk sounds lovely. Could we, Mama?”

“I think you could safely go just the four of you, if you all stick close,” says Constance, with the expression of a woman who knows Valira is going to deliberately get distracted by some tree or other. At least she doesn't seem unhappy about it. Cordelia opens her mouth, and Constance, who hasn't said no to Cordelia's slightest wish since she came back, gives her a sharp look. “You have lessons, girls, but we can go for a family walk later.”

Whatever objections Trilli and Cordelia have to that are lost in a flurry of searching for shawls and bonnets, until Valira and Quil and the Windroses are ready to go out on a walk. After a few exchanged looks, Terry politely gives Valira his arm, leaving his wife to escort Quil, already leaning in to say something low and, judging from Quil's duck of the head, flirtatious as they leave the house.

“Haoti wanted us to pass on his apologies,” Terry says as they strike out, and Valira gives him an inquiring look. “He had a letter from his man of business in Hylene, and says that it doesn't make sense to come back here after that, even if it only takes a few days, so he'll be going to Belvale Park.”

“Nothing wrong, I hope?” she asks, and hopes her voice is steady. Whether his man of business wrote or not, she suspects he came here to assure Quil's happiness and make his apologies and nothing more. She won't get to thank him, or say anything else, not that she'd know how to say anything else. And Cordelia, she knows, will be upset, but she can't explain that to Terry.

“No, or at least not that he told us.”

Phi and Quil are getting ahead of them, and Terry isn't impolite enough to look annoyed at being stuck with her, but she wants to let him go to them anyway. She just needs her questions answered first. “I don't know if he told you what he was speaking to Quil about last night.”

“He did. He … he had some apologies for us as well, as though we hadn't made our own choices.” He hesitates. “We intend to apologize too.”

“That's between you and Quil.” She shouldn't say it, but they're his dearest friends, and she has to. “Did you forgive him?”

After a long moment of scrutiny, he smiles and squeezes her arm companionably. “We did. Though I won't blame Quil for taking longer. With us as much as him. He's still our friend.”

“Good,” she says, and glances over her shoulder. They're well out of sight of the house. “Now, go on. We all know you're not on this walk to talk to me.”

“Your blessing means a great deal,” he says, and he gives her a brotherly kiss on the cheek before removing his arm from hers and trotting ahead to catch up with Phi and Quil.

Valira does just good enough a job of chaperoning that she'll be able to look Constance in the eye and just bad enough that the three of them lose her on the woods paths a few times. They walk with Quil between them, talking easily to her and each other, and make her laugh a few times, draw her out until she's talking with her hands about something, impassioned, both of them watching in unfeigned, unhidden delight. They've learned their lessons, it seems, about what will overwhelm her and what will make her open up. Valira walks at an easy pace and inspects the trees for signs of rot and blight, looks out for autumn forage to bring home, and remembers her pangs from the autumn before, not quite envy but the wistfulness of wishing she had someone to walk with, someone who looked at her that way, someone to know her like her sisters do, like the Windroses could come to know Quil.

By the time they get home and the Windroses leave, Quil is glowing with happiness, and with more surety than she had in the whole of last year, and Valira lingers with her on the doorstep as they walk away, even though she knows their family will have a hundred questions for them, even Arfil, who's pretending to be above all of it. “Do you think they will?” she asks.

“Maybe,” says Quil, but there's warmth on her face, before she takes Valira's hand and looks at her in sudden concern. “Terry says Haoti is gone.”

“He told me too,” says Valira, and makes her voice as brisk as she can. “It's for the best. He would hate to be thanked.”

“If you're sure,” says Quil, but she leaves it there, and goes in to dodge questions from their family instead.

*

The Windroses come again the next day, and the next, and every day for a week and longer, until Quil laughs and says that it will be very hard to pay a return call if they keep preempting it and Terry says, at his most charming, that it wouldn't be a hardship to see her twice in a day. Whenever others from the village call while they're calling, there are more than a few raised eyebrows, but more often than not, it's the three of them out walking in the increasing autumn chill while Valira follows dutifully along, losing them for longer and longer periods every day, until four days in Quil returns rosy and slightly disheveled from one of those losses, and then she just finds somewhere to sit with her watercolors out of sight of the house and waits for them to come back.

Last fall, in the assembly rooms and during Quil's illness, it was marked flirtation and courtly attention, but this is something else, something so obvious no one can deny it, a steady affection that any fool could see, and this time, Quil doesn't demur. When there's a village assembly and the Windroses come, she dances with both of them twice and lets them bring her punch in between other dances, and doesn't seem to care about the gossip, or about the assumptions people will make that they're already betrothed or close to it, with that level of attention.

They've been visiting nearly two weeks when Valira, in the middle of packing up her paints and wondering where her favorite bonnet has gone (odds have it on Trilli's head on her visit to Idilus's for lessons), hears Terry in the hall asking for Arfil and Constance instead of Quil. Valira almost drops her paints in her haste to look at Quil, who was halfway to standing and falls back, undignified, into her seat, eyes wide, so dazed it takes several seconds for the smile to break out on her face.

The housekeeper, in a state of great emotion, runs around fetching Constance, who was in the kitchen with the cook conferring about meals, and Arfil, in his study as always, and eventually reappears to tell them to go up to Arfil's study where they can speak to both of them.

It's a good half hour before there's the sound of four sets of footsteps coming down the stairs, and in that time, Valira has started wondering if Quil is going to have a magic surge, with all the emotion that's been building while she waited, nearly pacing a hole in the floor all the while. They both stand when they hear footsteps, waiting to see what happens, and Valira could cry with relief when Arfil and Constance come in, Constance smiling with shining eyes, Arfil with his mouth quirked in unmistakable amusement. It's Constance who speaks. “Quil, darling, the Windroses would like to speak to you alone for a moment. Will you give them time?”

Quil smooths down her dress with a lot more equanimity than she was showing moments ago. “I'd be glad to, Mama.”

Valira clasps her hand for a moment. “I'll see you in just a few minutes, then,” she says, and goes out the door, Constance and Arfil ahead of her, walking past the Windroses in the hall. They both look a little dazed and nervous, and Valira gives them an encouraging smile before they go in, the door gently shutting behind them.

None of them know what to do with themselves for the half hour that follows. Arfil, who would usually go back to his study, seems inclined to just stand and fidget, and Constance can't stop smiling, though her eyes brim with tears the whole time. Valira wants to listen, and knows the girls would encourage her to, but she's the one who recommends they go out to the garden and wait for Quil to come to them, and both of them seem to like the idea.

“What about you, Valira?” Arfil asks when he's installed on a bench and Valira and Constance are picking some apples from the closest tree to the house, talking quietly about how to preserve them.

Valira frowns at him over her shoulder. “What about me?”

“Anyone caught your eye? On your travels with Kithri, perhaps?”

For a moment, she thinks about Haoti Ewhoza, wonders what Arfil would say if she said his name, when he only knows the bad. How Constance would react, when Valira is almost sure that Quil confided in her about Haoti's apology but is still keeping Cordelia's secret. “I keep telling you,” she says as lightly as she can. “I'll be an old maid. It's lucky Quil is making such a good match, I'll never be without a place to stay.”

Neither of them looks happy about that, but they don't press, and Valira goes back to her apples until eventually the door opens, and Quil comes out alone. She looks like she's been crying, but the smile is so bright on her face that Valira doesn't have a moment of worry. Instead, she puts her apples down, making an absent note to get them later, and goes to Quil, Arfil and Constance converging on her at almost the same moment.

“We're going to be married,” says Quil, soft and a little disbelieving and so joyful that Valira's heart hurts with it. “Perhaps before the winter, with your permission. I wanted to tell you myself.”

They all knew the news was coming, but they still overwhelm her with their delight, all of them trying to hug her and ask her a hundred questions at once while she answers them in overlapping sentences that make no sense at all.

“We should go inside,” Constance says eventually. “I'm sure they're waiting patiently and will be very happy to talk all as a family. Will they stay until the girls get home?”

They will, as it turns out. From the sheer disbelieving joy on their faces when Valira gets back to the sitting room, she suspects they're going to have a hard time making themselves go home. As soon as Quil comes in they reach out for her in unison, and she goes to stand between them like it's the natural thing to do, and all of them receive congratulations and well wishes like it's already their wedding day.

When the girls get home not an hour later, they greet the news with shrieks of joy and a hundred questions about the wedding, and by then Valira knows they must all be tired, and wanting more privacy, but they answer with good humor, and the Windroses stay through dinner when Constance asks, and Arfil takes out some champagne given to him, he tells them, by a very important mage indeed, though he won't drop the name.

It's a wonderful night, without a hint of the shadows of the past few months. Cordelia isn't subdued, for once. She's almost delirious with joy, insisting Quil tells the story of the proposal again and again, though Quil is scant on the details and Phi and Terry smile fondly every time like they're thinking of them. Trilli is just as bad, spending half of dinner musing over rhymes for what she calls an ode to their love before excusing herself directly after they finish eating to start work on it.

Phi is the one to eventually admit, laughing, that they've stayed too late, and didn't bring a lantern, so Valira finds them one and then leaves them to say their goodbyes to Quil, since betrothal earns them a little more privacy inside the house and not just because of her loose ideas of what it means to be a chaperone.

The festival atmosphere lasts even after they leave, until Cordelia starts drooping with exhaustion and Arfil starts looking longingly up the stairs to his study, and Constance asks Trilli to please continue her songwriting in the morning, once they've all rested. Once the process is begun, it's fast, and it isn't long until they're all shutting themselves away for the night, whispering congratulations to Quil as they part one by one.

Valira lays in their room and looks across at Quil, who can't keep the smile off her face, and thinks of how few nights they'll have left of their old easy routines. They aren't planning to have the wedding as fast as they can, but it won't be longer than two months, she's sure. They want to start their life together too much to wait, and Valira's going to be without someone to confide her day's thoughts in, since she can't imagine interrupting Cordelia and Trilli as they do it.

“You look sad,” Quil says, the smile slowly fading as she goes to blow out their candle. “What's the matter?”

“I'm just thinking about how much I'll miss you, when you've gone to get married.”

Quil sits down. “I want to say not to be silly, I'll be just across the fields, but I know what you mean. I'll miss you too, no matter how happy I am with them.” She frowns at Valira. “I want you to be as happy as I am. If you could—I've never been this happy, and I want it for you. I know you say you'll be an old maid, and if that's really and truly what you want, of course you should have it, but I don't think it is, after this past year.”

“It's not,” she says, and rolls away from the light. She can't have Quil looking at her during this. Quil seems to realize it, because a moment later darkness falls across the room, only the faint moonlight shining through. “But what I think I want instead—I don't think it's possible. Or maybe even wise.”

Quil is silent for a long moment. “It's a long way away.”

“I know.” She rolls again, to face Quil's voice in the dark, like she's done a thousand times before. “But I've thought to myself—Fairpoint Hold isn't all happy memories for them, and if there was another house near a dear friend, maybe someday they'd go there instead. And the rest of the family, I don't know, but I imagine ways, even if I have to imagine Idilus rebuilding his school somewhere else. And you could have the Windroses, and I could have—we'd all be happy. But listen to me: we'll be happy here too. There's only one person and one place missing from my picture of happiness, if we all stay here. That's not such a big difference.”

“Of course it is,” says Quil, and it sounds like her heart is breaking. Valira won't have that on what should be a night that's nothing but happy.

“I'm happy for you, and I'm content in my life here,” says Valira, and is relieved to find that it's true as she says it. “Whatever else I want, that won't change. Don't worry about me tonight, Quil. I'll find some happiness, some way or another.” She clears her throat. “Now, anything to tell me that you didn't want to share in front of the rest of the family?”

Quil sighs, but when she starts talking again, she sounds happy again, and she whispers until they fall asleep about love and joy and happy disbelief, all the promises the Windroses made and all the ones she gave them in return, and whatever she's missing, Valira is glad that Quil has this at last.

*

The next week has them all in a state of bliss that would amuse Valira if she weren't susceptible to it. The Windroses relent enough in their constant calls to allow a few return visits, which delights the girls, and mostly seem to use them to ask Quil her thoughts on the furnishings, and what she might like to change, and if she even likes the house at all, which flusters her enough to get Cordelia and Trilli laughing at her. Most days, though, they come, and usually contrive to be left alone with Quil for at least a little while, and Quil walks through her days like she's having a particularly nice dream, and has magic surges twice out of sheer joy.

They're visiting, just talking of going out for a walk despite clouds and a bite in the air that threatens an early sprinkle of snow, when a carriage clatters into the driveway. It looks familiar, and for a moment, Valira's heart is in her throat before she recognizes the device on the door a second before an officious coachman opens it and lets Sir Solomon out, in a state of some agitation.

No one else, of course, recognizes him, so they're all exchanging confused looks while Valira is standing, already prepared to receive him. Sure enough, he asks the housekeeper if she's in, and when she shows him to the door, he seeks her out immediately. “Miss Linnaeus. Forgive the intrusion.”

“Not at all. Please, let me present you to my family.” Valira manages to carry off the introductions, which leave everyone looking baffled and concerned. He stands shifting awkwardly, just waiting to dispense with pleasantries, and as soon as she's done with Phi and Terry, who are pleasant and talk about being acquainted with his nephew, she moves on to asking what questions she can think of. “Forgive me, but if you sent a letter saying you would be in the neighborhood, I never received it. Is there something wrong?”

“I wonder if you'd show me around your garden, since I've been on the road since morning,” he says, which isn't an answer at all.

Valira looks at Constance and Arfil, but it's clear to all of them that he's not going to importune her, so after a moment Arfil nods, and Valira pulls on something like a smile. “Of course, Sir Solomon, I'm always happy to show off my gardens.”

They'll no doubt have spies looking out the windows, but Valira doesn't mind that, considering she has no idea what he wants, and he's clearly worked himself up over something. She finds a shawl, casts one last confused look at Quil, and takes him outside, through the familiar paths she uses with new guests.

“I'll be frank with you,” he says after only a minute, and draws himself up straight. “Miss Linnaeus, I beg you to reconsider my nephew.”

Valira knows she's gaping and can't help it. “I beg your pardon?”

“I know it's rude to speak of it, but I have to intervene. I hear gossip that you've refused his suit, that it was the reason for his long sojourn in Hylene not too long ago, and I couldn't sit and let this chance pass him by.”

His sojourn in Hylene while he was saving Cordelia and then nearly dead from the work, and Sir Solomon thinks he was pining for her hand. She could almost laugh, if she could do anything but stare. “I don't know where you've heard this gossip, but I don't have anything to say to you on this subject.”

“Please, Miss Linnaus. I'm aware of his shortcomings—he admitted to me that he was weak enough to let a demon inside, and he never stood up enough to his father, and his manners leave much to be desired, however polite you were when I asked them about before, but do think of how life could be with him. His estate is old and wealthy, and he comes from two fortunes. You'd be kept in comfort, and no doubt your family as well, and I have more than enough to settle on him at his marriage, if that would help you to reconsider.”

Valira realizs, abruptly, that if she stands next to Sir Solomon a moment longer, she will strangle him with her bare hands. She paces a few steps away and turns to face him. “You think money would tempt me to a marriage? You think I'd make a marriage where I disliked my partner so much I would have to be _bribed_? Why would you want that for a member of your family who could have … who could have so much better than me?”

“He couldn't, I assure you!” he says, with sudden glee, like he's unlocked a key to a mystery, not realizing how close she is to making vines burst from the ground and hold him until he apologizes. “You may have been disowned by your previous connections, but your guardian has power, and your own magical prowess is more than enough to make you a worthy bride for the Ewhoza family. If you only refused him out of proper modesty, that's—”

“Please stop,” says Valira, and her voice is shaking. Frog would speak of her magic, and Arfil's history, but he wouldn't breathe a word about why she has the Linnaeus name without the Linnaeus connections, so Sir Solomon has been looking her up. “Let me be clear, Sir Solomon: you have overstepped. Whatever matters are between Major Ewhoza and I are none of your business, and I know he would be as horrified as I am that you're here like this.”

“An extra thousand a year.”

“You are insulting me and refuse to see it!” she snaps, and she can feel every root under the ground, and wonders if Quil's magic feels like this before a surge, like ripples in a pond in the rain, scattering everywhere, moving faster and faster as it builds to a downpour. “You came here, it seems, specifically to insult your nephew, a man who I respect and like much more than I do you, but you seem to think you're complimenting me and you are not. If I want to marry someone, I'd marry them with pennies a year. And if I don't want a marriage, you could pay me a queen's ransom and I wouldn't have it.”

“I can bring him back and bring him up to scratch, Miss Linnaeus. If money is an insult, name any other price. Magical artifacts, land. Assure me you'll marry my nephew and I'll leave you in peace.”

Valira shakes her head, almost choking on the irony. “Whatever happens between us is nothing to do with you. You can't change my mind, no matter how much you insult me, and I don't think there's anything you could say to me that would be more insulting to me, in fact, so I'm calling this interview to a close.”

“Please reconsider. He could yet make something of himself, with the right wife beside him. You're the best chance he has.”

“And you're a miserable excuse for someone who ought to care about him. He deserves better than you, and better than your bribes and your anxious interest in making him a better person instead of being one yourself. You think he's worthy enough to raise your heir for you, but maybe that's just to give you an excuse to feel superior to her as well. Either of them is worth ten of you, and I doubt he'd be so cruel as to leave you alone in your old age, but you're lucky that I'm not his wife, because I'd tell him to stay away from you.” He gapes at her. Valira is too angry to feel satisfied. “If it helps, Sir Solomon, he didn't propose to me before his trip to Hylene. Ask him yourself why he was there, and what he did. You're not going to get any answers here.”

Sir Solomon splutters a little, coming out of his shock at a lesser person speaking to him so. “I come to offer you kindness, to induce you to take the best marriage a girl without a family will ever be offered, and this is how you respond? You're worse than he is.”

Valira lifts her chin. “I'm not without a family. But you're probably right. In that case, I don't think we have any more business, and you can leave. My family will forgive you for not saying your goodbyes.” She nods sharply at the drive, where his carriage is still waiting, groom looking after the horses. “Please go.”

“You don't know what you're doing,” he says, and storms away to his carriage, shouting at his staff and getting in, before he's gone as abruptly as he arrived, leaving Valira to let out a surge of pent-up magic as productively as she can, forcing a nearby tree through dormancy and all the way to bloom again, the grass and wildflowers beneath it perking up in spring wakefulness. They'll all go back to normal in a few days, but for a moment she can bend to a daisy and breathe it in, and let herself think.

When she straightens up, Quil is there, with the Windroses an awkward few paces behind her, unsure if they're intruding. “That didn't look pleasant,” Quil offers.

“He insulted me, not to mention his nephew, so much that it couldn't be borne. I sent him away.”

Terry's brows snap together, and Phi reaches to her side for a weapon that isn't there and then turns a serious look on Valira. “I'll go after him, if he needs more of a lesson than that. What did he say?”

Valira shakes her head. “It hardly matters, except that I pity Major Ewhoza for having to call him a kinsman. Leave it be. I just hope I never have to see him again.”

“Let us know if he comes back, or bothers you more,” Phi says. “You're Quil's sister, and Haoti is our friend, and I don't want anyone insulting either of you.”

Valira lets herself pull strength from how quickly they've started treating Quil like one of their family, and how that's expanding out to the rest of them, how their calls may be for Quil but they talk with everyone else too. “You're very kind. It was a terrible conversation, but it's over now, and I made it clear he shouldn't come back. I don't want to ruin our afternoon.”

All of them relent at once, with an exchange of looks that includes Quil, all three of them in silent communication, which is more warming than anything else they could have done. After a moment, Phi offers her arm and walks Valira inside, and Quil and Terry hasten ahead to presumably hiss a few warnings that Valira doesn't want to talk about it, judging from how innocently everyone is occupying themselves when she arrives.

She's more the center of attention than she wants to be for the afternoon, but nobody asks, and after diner, when she begs off the evening entertainment with pleas of a headache, they leave her to her whirling thoughts, her pity for Haoti, and worst of all, her pity for herself.

*

“I got a letter from Mr. Bel today,” Arfil tells her a few days later when she goes up to his study to ask how Trilli's lessons are going.

“How is he?” Normally she wouldn't ask, but then again, normally Arfil doesn't announce when he gets a letter, now that correspondence is more frequent, and normally Frog doesn't take so long to answer her letters.

“He doesn't say much of that.” He smooths the letter down on the table in front of him. “In fact, he says Sir Solomon arrived home in quite a mood and has been slandering you, saying that you're a fool to turn down his nephew.”

“I didn't turn down his nephew—well, I did, but in this conversation, I didn't do that. I turned down bribes.” She winces. “Did Kalon register his own opinion on the matter? Or Frog's?”

Arfil's eyebrows are slowly climbing his forehead, and Valira tries not to let much show, though if he's this suspicious, she's probably not going to make it out of the study without telling him everything. Arfil is vague and inattentive, but when he notices something, he'll get all the information he can about it. “His opinion is mostly surprise, considering his household had thought there might be an engagement in your future, though reading between the lines there's a lot of disapproval too. Pity he's relying on Solomon so much for connections for publishing. But as for you and Major Ewhoza, I confess I'm at a loss. The last I heard, you hated him. At best, maybe, you pitied him for his part in the demon's history.”

After a moment, Valira sits down in the chair across from his desk. When they were all younger, they each spent time there. The other three, she knows, would talk with him, tell him their secrets and their worries. She mostly sat there in silence, but it was always companionable. She wonders if he misses it. “Did Cordelia tell you much about how she was saved?” she asks at last. “She told me in confidence, but I think she'd be happy to tell us all except he asked her not to, and I find I'm not inclined to indulge his attempts at self-sacrifice if it means people don't understand him.”

Arfil puts the letter down. “I think you'd better tell me everything, because Cordelia hasn't been forthcoming.” In a rush, Valira does, everything Cordelia told her and what she's surmised, and by the time she's done, Arfil is sitting back in his chair, honestly shocked. “I must find a way to repay him. Your change in opinion is gratitude, then?”

“He doesn't want that, or he would have told us,” she says, shaking her head. “I couldn't even get near him to thank him when he was here for dinner. And no, it's not gratitude. It's—confirmation, I suppose, of a change of opinion that started before that.”

“I only want the four of you to be happy. Would marrying him make you happy?”

“It might,” she admits, and looks at her lap instead of at him. “But he left, and if Solomon was here to try to bribe me to have him, I doubt he's coming back, and even if he did, what could I expect?”

There's a long silence. When she finally looks up, Arfil is watching her, a little rueful and a little amused. When he catches her eye, he taps the paper. “Well, the Zanaram-Bels seem to have high expectations for you. Don't write yourself off as an old maid yet.”

Valira shakes her head. “A misinterpretation.” She stands up. “I'm going to be happy. I promise. I just need a chance to forget this.”

*

“We got a letter this morning,” Terry tells her the next day, falling back from Quil's side on a walk. Today, Trilli is with them, so Valira is actually chaperoning so Trilli doesn't get any ideas about what she can expect from her cousin in a few years' time, but Trilli is ranging ahead, humming something to herself, and Quil and her betrotheds have been walking together.

“Tell me you aren't being called away,” she says, half in jest. “You'll break Quil's heart.”

“Nothing like that. I think we're here through the winter, especially after the wedding, though if that's the case you should expect a whole pile of Phi's siblings to come and meet our new wife and see what we've done with the house.” He frowns a little. “A letter from Haoti.”

She doesn't stumble, but it's only because she knows the roots and slippery patches of her paths better than anywhere else in the world. “I hope that he's well?”

“He seems to be. He's coming back.” Again, she doesn't stumble, but this time she stops abruptly. Terry is prepared enough to stop with her, though, and she wonders what Quil has told them in confidence, or worse, if she's just that obvious. “He got as far as his uncle's before he decided Star wouldn't like to be picked up so quickly and wondered if our guest room might still be open to him for a few days. Maybe a week.”

“Well. I'll be glad to see him again.”

“Will you?” Ahead, Phi and Quil have stopped at a distance just out of earshot, lingering while looking at what they're pretending is a very interesting knot in a tree, so he must have warned them he planned to tell her. “I know things have been difficult with you two. I'd like to have a dinner with your family while he's here at our house, but if you'd rather not ...”

“If he's been to see his uncle, you should ask him that question.” She sighs and shakes her head. “I really don't mind. It might be awkward—it _will_ be awkward—but you're going to be my brother-in-law and he's a friend of your family, so we'll have to get used to each other sooner or later.”

“If you're sure,” says Terry, and starts walking again. Valira falls into step with him, back under control, and after a few silent steps, shoos him to catch up with Phi and Quil. Only a few minutes later, they stop to wait for her, and call Trilli back, and make a point of making it a family conversation, and Valira would roll her eyes if she weren't so grateful for something to take her attention off of Haoti's impending arrival.

*

Two days later, the Windroses send a servant with apologies at their usual time to call, saying Haoti just arrived and they're catching up with their guest. Everyone watches Valira too much, and Valira tries to ignore it by wondering who knows what and who's guessed what. Quil seems torn between hope and suspicion, Cordelia is steadily happy, Arfil just shakes his head at her, and Trilli and Constance just seem baffled, but they all seem to have some idea that he's here for her.

Of course, after Sir Solomon's visit, it's hard to imagine otherwise.

The day after that, Trilli and Cordelia complain and cajole for hours trying to stay home from their lessons, but Arfil and Constance send them, and Valira spends her time in a state of nervous anticipation, waiting for word and sure that it won't come in equal measure, until there's a knock on the door at the Windroses' usual time.

Quil startles into a flurry of movement like she's about to be proposed to again, and the housekeeper shows the Windroses in with Haoti behind them. Terry, with cheer a little too forced, speaks before anyone else has to figure out the polite formulas. “Look who came to stay!”

“Welcome back, Major Ewhoza,” says Constance, though there's a wrinkle between her brows that says she's not sure how welcome he is. “I hope you're well?”

“Yes, Mrs. Myale. And your family? You're all well?”

“We are,” says Constance, with a dip of a nod.

Quil interrupts the pleasantries before they can get any worse, much louder than usual. “It looks like it's going to be one of the last pleasant days of the autumn. I was hoping you two would come for a walk. Major, would you like to come as well?”

Constance frowns around at them, suspecting a conspiracy. “I can fetch—”

“Valira and I can chaperone each other,” Quil continues, still enforcing her will by volume alone. “I know it's chilly for you, Mama.”

“If you're sure,” says Constance, dubious, but Arfil puts a hand on her wrist and shakes his head and she subsides.

“We'll be back soon,” says Valira, since she has to say something, and goes in search of her warmest shawl, since it's not actually a very pleasant day—the wind is whipping, for all the sun is shining, and she hopes Quil is bringing at least two shawls, or she'll end piled in every coat and hat the Windroses brought with both of them shivering.

Haoti is quiet while everyone else chats, and doesn't seem to know what to do with himself once they're all outside and walking the familiar paths. Valira doesn't either, but the other three seem to expect them to figure it out, because they're barely a few steps into the woods when they start increasing their speed, so gradually it seems almost natural, until they're out of sight around a bend. After a moment, half amused and half annoyed, Valira slows down to put more space between them, and she's relieved when Haoti slows down as well. “Miss Linnaeus, I can't imagine the depth of the apology I owe you,” he begins before she can open her mouth.

Valira stares at him. “What can you mean? I was just going to start thanking you.”

“She told you. I hoped she wouldn't.”

“Why? You deserve so much more than thanks. At least you deserve for us to recognize what you did for us.”

“It's the opposite of what I want. I don't want you indebted, Valira—Miss Linnaeus. I'm sorry.”

“You can call me by my name, I don't mind. Your friends are marrying my sister, even leaving aside what you did for Cordelia.” She takes a breath. “This conversation is a tangle. What were you trying to apologize for?”

“For my uncle. I stopped to see him on my way to get Estara, and I'm mortified. I don't know what he said, only having his side of the story, but whatever it was, it must have been terrible. I hope you know that whatever he did, he did on his own. I had nothing to do with it.”

She shakes her head. “Even when I thought the worst of you, I wouldn't have expected what I heard from him.”

“Then I can only apologize again.”

She stops walking, and waits for him to turn and face her. “It wasn't you. If he ever realizes what he did wrong, I'd take his apology, but you have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I do. You made that clear before, even if that was before my uncle—did he really try to bribe you to marry me?”

“Yes. I'm sorry you have to deal with him.” She shakes her head. “But I don't care about him. I just want you to know—everything you did for my family, the price you paid for it, I know, and I'm so grateful. Quil knows too, and Arfil. I couldn't really avoid telling them. But you should tell the whole family, none of us like secrets and we all want to thank you, Major.”

“If I'm using your name, you should use mine.” He sighs and looks away. “It's something I should have done before letting it take Mr. Loz. I was just setting wrongs right, and I wouldn't have minded them knowing, even if I don't want their thanks either, but I didn't want you to know.”

Valira frowns, stung. “Why not?”

“Because I don't want you feeling indebted. Or worse, obligated. Gratitude isn't what I want from you.”

“Even when you did this for my family?”

“Glad as I was to help your family, I didn't do it for them.” He looks at her again, and Valira takes an automatic step forward. “You must know I did it for you.”

Valira swallows. “Then if you did it because of me, shouldn't I have even more reason to be grateful?”

“I can't do this. I can't bear the thought that you might feel like you owe me.” He turns and walks a few steps, and then paces back. “But I can't—I saw Solomon and I thought my hopes were dashed again, but I stopped at the dower house, and Frog gave me reason to think there might be a chance. Even if a slim one. But if it was born out of debt, it's no chance at all.”

“Whatever it is, say it. You came all this way.” Her voice is unsteady, and it's his turn to step forward, concern written on his face, and then they're within reaching distance, but she doesn't know how to reach, doesn't know how to encourage him to say what she thinks, impossibly, he might have come to say.

There's a long silence, and in the distance, she can hear the faint sound of Terry's laughter. “If you're only grateful to me, papered over your hatred from this spring, please tell me. Then maybe I can go on.”

“It's not that. I may be grateful, but I don't hate you. I know you much better now, and everything I've learned has—I like you. I respect you. I don't know how to make you believe me.”

He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again he looks like he's made a decision. “Neither do I. But I trust your integrity, so I know that if only for my sake, you'll do what's best for you.” He shifts a little. Valira can't look away from his eyes. “I did this wrong last time, so terribly wrong, and I'm afraid I'll do it again. Maybe I should just say it simply, at first. Valira, will you marry me?”

Somewhere, she's known since the start of this conversation that it would end with this, but it's still hard to believe it, when she hears the words. They freeze her long enough that his expression shutters, and she has to hastily fill the silence before he can apologize again, or withdraw the offer. “I will do what's best for me,” she says. “But last time, what was best was refusing you. And this time—what I think of you has changed so much. Not because I'm grateful, but because I know you now. And I know you well enough to want to marry you.”

Valira has seen Haoti smile a few times now. In his portrait, softly at his friends and his cousin, even a little bit in her presence. The expression that grows on his face isn't quite a smile, but the look in his eyes, the way he reaches one hand out and almost touches hers as though he can't help it, makes her think she's never seen him this happy. “You're accepting my hand?”

“Yes.” And then, because she finds she likes saying it: “I'll marry you.”

She hardly notices him moving before he's kissing her, arms coming around her, suddenly, it seems, totally assured of his welcome in her arms. She kisses him back, already breathless, halfway to giddy, so happy that if she didn't have the tangible presence of him pressed against her she would wonder if she were imagining it. When he breaks the kiss, it's only to go far enough to rest his forehead against hers. “I love you. That's where I should have started.”

“It's where you started last time. It seems fitting to end with it this time.” This close, she can feel his wince and the catch in his breath. “We can't seem to do things the easy way. I shouldn't have brought that up.”

“We'll have to talk about it someday.” He pulls back, and she reaches out and captures his hands before he can withdraw too far. “You won't let me apologize for my uncle, but I will apologize for that. I was so caught up in my feelings for you that I assumed your feelings, then. I won't do it again.”

“Then I'll have to tell you about them as often as I can.” She squeezes his hands. “I love you.” He closes his eyes for a moment, breathing going shaky, and she waits to continue until he opens them again to look at her. “Almost as soon as I got to know you, I started falling in love with you. You just didn't let me know you until after you proposed. And I don't know how you managed to fall in love with me, given I wasn't all that pleasant to you.”

His mouth quirks, more rueful than pleased. “You were smart, and witty, and protective of your sister, and pretty, though that was only the smallest part of it. Maybe the first night or so I didn't care about you, but then I actually heard you talking. And the next thing I knew I loved you.”

There's something almost offended in his tone, at the suddenness of all of it, and Valira can't contain her smile, though she shakes her head a moment later. “It was like that for me too. One moment I was realizing that I hadn't understood you at all, and the next I was leaving Belvale forever for all I knew and just understanding why I hated the idea. Though I think Frog guessed it long before I did.”

“As you said.” He frees one of his hands from hers, but only to brush a wisp of hair out of her eyes. “We can't do things the easy way. And I'm glad he guessed, or I don't think I ever would have come back.”

“I'll have to thank him. And, after all that, maybe it will be easier now.” Haoti leaves his hand on her shoulder, eyebrows raised, and Valira makes a face, thinking of perhaps a few of the same things he is: explaining to their families and friends, the people who will be confused, the people who will be happy, and Sir Solomon, who will certainly have some opinions on it all. “At least we'll try not to make it harder on each other, won't we?”

Haoti draws her in to kiss her again. “That, at least, I can promise.”

*

Quil and the Windroses leave them alone for so long that Valira half-expects Constance or Arfil to come after them. By the time she hears their chatter, just a little louder than usual, coming back along the path, she and Haoti are sitting on the cold ground, shoulders together against the chill, arguing about forest management, Valira scrawling diagrams in the dirt with a twig. She doesn't bother getting up, and when they arrive, there's a moment where everyone is staring at everyone else before Terry starts laughing. “Only the two of you. Did we leave you alone for nothing at all?”

“Talking about using some of the old growth to grow forest crops is useful,” Valira objects, letting Haoti help her up, brushing dirt off her skirt as she goes, though she may ask Quil for a Prestidigitation before she goes inside, lest anyone make assumptions. Quil looks a little less happy than the other two, and she gives Valira a searching look once they're on the same level again. She's also taken Phi's coat, it seems, and given Phi one of her shawls in return. “All's well,” she adds, in answer to everyone's exasperation, and then turns to Haoti. “Did you tell all of them?”

“Only Phi and Terry, but I assumed they would tell Quil.” And then, to the rest of them: “She's accepted me, pending the family's approval.”

Valira thinks Arfil will say yes, though she's of age and technically doesn't need his permission. She's a little more worried about Trilli and about Quil, whose expression for once is mostly unreadable. “I've accepted him regardless,” she says, and puts her arm through his. “Though there are still plenty of details to work out.” Like where Trilli will live, when Valira is her guardian by blood but Constance is her mother in the ways that matter, and like the detail of telling Constance and Trilli his part in Cordelia's rescue.

Phi, who usually isn't very affectionate with anyone but Terry and now Quil, reaches out and gives Valira a kiss on the cheek, and then Haoti one. “I'm so pleased for both of you. And that you'll finally be some kind of in-law to me, Haoti, after none of my relatives could tempt you.”

“You say that now, but it means you also gain Estara and Solomon.”

“We'll be delighted to have Star,” says Terry, and starts walking, forcing the rest of them to go along, the knot of them untangling as they go. “She'll steal all of Lanra's salary and keep him humble, she's welcome in the family as far as I'm concerned.”

And somehow, as easily as that, they're all talking about family. Valira is used to a family made up of a few small disparate units, but if she is, Phi and Terry are used to taking it a step further, with all of Phi's brothers, and it seems that as far as they're concerned, anyone Quil loves is their family now, and anyone Haoti loves too. Suddenly, Valira has brothers-in-law scattered all over the country, and Phi is telling her that they'll all come for the wedding, that Fairpoint Hold will be bursting with them, and that they're going to want to meet her too, that Lady Gariel is a bard who would be glad to give Trilli a trick or two, that Len will like Constance very much, drawing a thousand little lines to tie their families securely together like they've only been waiting for the chance.

By the time they reach the house, Haoti seems a little stunned, and Valira feels warm and happy and ready to share her joy with the whole world. Constance is fretting in the hall when they get inside, clearly wondering where they've been, and the girls come out of the sitting room as soon as they come in, take one look at Haoti's hand held securely in Valira's, and start asking questions in very different tones of voice, shocking Constance and filling the hallway with a chaos no one could answer questions through until Arfil comes downstairs.

“What's all this noise?”

“Valira! And Major Ewhoza!” says Trilli, with all the dramatic accusation of a scandalized father in a pantomime.

Cordelia, on the other hand, is beaming. “Valira, really? Haoti, did you ask her?”

“With no thanks to you for telling my secrets for me,” he says, but there's the same fondness he gets when he's talking about his cousin, and Valira feels even more buoyant with the joy of it, that they already love each other, which gives her hope about the rest of the family.

“What secrets?” Constance asks, sharp and baffled. “Will someone explain what's going on here?”

“I believe they must be engaged,” says Arfil with resigned amusement. “Come along, everyone, this conversation will be much more comfortable in the sitting room, and Major Ewhoza, I believe you have some explanations to make to the family members who don't yet know what you did.”

Haoti sighs at Valira and Cordelia, neither of whom can manage to look innocent, but they all go where Arfil tells them. Constance is gaping between them in shock, Trilli has been reduced to outraged noises, and every servant in the house must be eavesdropping, but they make it into an appropriate array of seats eventually.

The explanations that follow take at least three times as long as they should, with everyone's interjections. Trilli and Constance are both unhappy about Cordelia keeping secrets, and Constance showers Haoti with so much gratitude that he ducks his head to try to avoid it. He seems much easier with Trilli's continued mistrust, and with Phi and Terry's scolding over all the things he left out of the apparently very vague explanation he gave them.

Once the explanation of what Haoti did for Cordelia is out of the way, their engagement barely registers as a shock for anyone but Trilli, who seems more upset by that than about his asking Cordelia to lie about who saved her. No doubt she'll realize within half an hour that now she'll have the excuse to visit Valira and get to know society around Belvale Park, and that Valira will have much more standing to introduce her to Hylene society too, which will start to inure her to the idea, but they're going to have to have a talk or two where Valira tells her everything she hasn't while she tried to work it out for herself.

“What,” Trilli asks at one early moment, with an air of triumph and fear all at once, “is Kithri going to say? I can't imagine.”

Valira opens her mouth to respond, and finds that Haoti is ahead of her, his mouth quirked with amusement. “I think she might have guessed, considering the lecture she read me when I woke up in the hospital about foolishness and self-sacrifice. If she didn't trust Valira to decide for herself, I suspect I wouldn't have had a very easy time of it.”

That leaves her in shock to say the least, but luckily she is easily mollified with talk of wedding plans, not that they have many, though their wedding won't happen much later than Quil's if either of them has anything to say about it. “We can marry as soon as my cousin can arrive, if you ask me,” Haoti says when she badgers him a bit too long about it. “My life wouldn't be worth living if she heard I got married without her there.”

“I'm so excited to meet Miss Denrathy,” says Cordelia, and she looks happy and herself, a miracle Valira will never be able to thank Haoti enough for. “He told me about her when we were recovering together,” she tells the rest of them. “Did you know that she's training to become a paladin? I want weapons training, Mama, could we find a tutor?”

Before Constance can speak past her obvious misgivings, Phi steps in with an offer for lessons in the sword, and then Cordelia is off, already planning her future, dismissing the thought of being a paladin herself but liking the thought of knowing how to fight, and Trilli is only a second behind her, saying she'll become a wandering bard like those of legend, and then they're all laughing, in a confusion of trying to encourage their ambitions or thwart them, depending on opinion.

Arfil, Valira notes, is holding back, looking around at them all, checking on them as conversations overlap and splinter. He's just within reach, so she leans towards him and raises her eyebrows in query. “Everything all right?”

“Yes, of course. All of you are so happy, how could I be anything but?” His smile is a little lopsided, a little bittersweet, and she wonders if he's thinking about how few afternoons like this they'll be having, with Valira and Quil going away, even if Quil isn't going far. Vague as he is, he seems to like having noise around the place, and likes their noise in specific. If he'd just wanted to help them, he would have given them scholarships, perhaps found Constance an occupation, and lived at Idilus's school, but he's kept them all close by, and now they're going. “I'm happy for you, Valira. I was just thinking that I'm becoming an expert in giving my daughters away in marriage, and that if anyone comes for Cordelia or Trilli, I'll at least know it can't be as fraught as your and Quil's romances.”

Valira takes his hand and presses it between hers, and around the room, conversation has hushed enough that she thinks everyone must be listening, that they must have heard Arfil call them his daughters like she's never heard him do before even if he must think of them that way. “You're underestimating them,” she says as lightly as she can, and glances around. Cordelia is smiling at her lap, Constance and Quil both have tears in their eyes, and Trilli is smiling bright and warm, and everyone else is looking away, giving them a moment of privacy. “If you think they can't find trouble, you're deluding yourself.”

“Someday, if you have children, you will understand that self-delusion is the only way to survive,” he says, squeezes her hand, and stands up. “Now, if this is going to be a party, I'm going to tell the kitchen to expect three more for dinner, I won't hear of anyone going back to Fairpoint Hold until after a meal.”

When he's clearly looking for an excuse to escape before anyone says anything about what he said, even the polite Windroses don't have the heart to object to the invitation, and Arfil leaves the room, leaving a great deal of noise behind him as they all talk over each other, back to talking about weddings and guests and Cordelia's continued insistence that she wants to learn every weapon there is. Haoti takes her hand in his, and tilts his head when she looks at him, waiting to see if she wants to discuss it, and she does, but not at the moment, so she just shakes her head and asks him how likely his cousin is to teach Cordelia her favorite weapons with or without permission.

Their meals are never exactly formal, but dinner is rowdy enough that Valira would almost feel sorry for their guests, if they weren't fully involved in it all. Even Haoti is smiling and teasing Cordelia about needing to do her lessons if she's going to learn weapons as well, when she would have thought he'd be overwhelmed at best and annoyed at worst. She's still learning him, it seems, still underestimating him, but she knows she'll be happy to keep learning. Arfil and Constance preside over a series of toasts, delighting the girls by watering their wine less than usual, which only increases everyone's tendency to nonsense.

When they withdraw when the meal is done, though, everyone is tired, breaking off into smaller groups, voices growing quieter. In one corner, Constance and Arfil resume an eternal argument about Arfil's habit of leaving spell components where servants keep stumbling across them, while over at the pianoforte, the girls have their heads together over a piece of Trilli's music, with twin smiles that promise trouble.

Haoti, Phi, and Terry are all by the window, talking quietly over something, Haoti looking over at her once in a while, maybe wondering if she's going to come over.

For the moment, though, Valira is happy to stand with Quil, watching their family, so much bigger than it was only a month ago, and only growing if the letters Quil has started receiving from Phi's family introducing themselves to her are anything to judge by.

“I'm going to have to make up my mind to like him,” Quil says eventually, with an air of grudging compromise but a real smile on her face.

“You've got every right not to forgive him.” It needs saying, even if it's an uncomfortable thought, the two of them never fully at peace. “I know he could have ruined your happiness. Believe me, if I could have stopped myself loving him, I would have.”

“Then I'd be doing you a great disservice. You two are good for each other, surprising as that seems.” Quil elbows her gently. “And I just said I made up my mind, didn't I? You and Cordelia both love him so much, I can probably manage that, even.”

“I hope you do, someday.” Valira shakes her head and leans back against the wall. “Could you have imagined this a year ago, when they first came to Fairpoint Hold? Not just that we'd be marrying them, but that we'd be so happy doing it?”

Quil is silent for a little while, with the private smile that means she's thinking of the Windroses, and Valira thinks of her envy all that year, as though Quil was on the other side of a door she didn't know how to open whenever she smiled like that, or even when she looked sad in a specific way. Now, she thinks she understands it a lot better. “I don't think I knew I could be so happy at all,” she finally says.

“If anyone deserves it, you do.”

Quil takes her hand. “And you do. When I think of your insistence on being an old maid, and now this … yes, I think I can love him for making you this happy.”

Contentment is something Valira is used to, and affection, but happiness has always been moments, not a state. More and more, though, these past few weeks, and especially today, it seems to be staying, growing like a sapling just taking root, and it won't stay forever, but nothing ever does, and she thinks, with Haoti and with her family, it will be easier to make it come back. “Tell him that on our wedding day and I'm sure he won't ask for another present,” she says, halfway a tease even if she thinks Haoti would agree in all honesty.

Trilli clears her throat loud enough to draw the attention of the whole room and strikes a dramatic chord on the pianoforte. “A waltz!” she declares, and launches into one.

The room isn't large enough for a proper waltz, and is far too cluttered, but the mood is infectious, and Valira is so happy she'd try nearly anything Trilli suggested for the night and thinks everyone else feels much the same. Cordelia, clearly as part of a prearranged plan, insists on Arfil dancing with her, tugging at his hand until he relents even though he's barely danced in their memories and never a waltz—but none of them will gainsay Cordelia right now, so waltz he does. Terry, with a charming sweep of a bow, whirls Constance into the dance, and Quil laughs and leaves Valira to take Phi's hand when she offers it.

Haoti is on the other side of the room, and Valira has to duck between three couples to reach him, but she finds him eventually, and he's shaking his head, but his hand is already out, waiting to dance, though he isn't showy to make her laugh like Terry or Cordelia are their partners, isn't holding her close enough that in a ballroom it would be scandalous, like Phi is Quil, whispering something that makes her laugh. He just holds her gently and does the steps of the dance in a little clear square of floor, keeping well away from everyone else.

“Could you have imagined this, when we first met?” he asks after a few turns, smiling and shaking his head all at once. “I don't know if I could have imagined waltzing with you, let alone marrying you, but now here we are.”

Valira could almost laugh at the echo of her conversation with Quil, but she finds she's too happy to laugh about it, and all she can do is hold his hand tighter, their steps growing smaller and smaller, until they're barely moving, more rocking with Trilli's insistent beat. “Here we are,” she agrees. “And no, I never would have imagined it, not with the way we began.”

“It all took me by surprise,” he says, and Valira looks at him, looks around the room, at her family—their family, really—all of them happy and together. They've been through things she couldn't have imagined a year ago, with Mr. Loz, but somehow, after it all, they're better, with a future ahead of them none of them saw coming. “But the happiness most of all.”

“I love you,” she says, which is the only real answer she can make to that, and he laughs, sudden and bright, and twirls her into a turn like it's the only way to let go of his excess of joy, and Valira laughs too, and holds him close, and knows that whatever comes next, happiness will be the greatest part of it.


End file.
